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Chapter Text

There are a lot of people who were dissatisfied with the fourth (and fifth) seasons of The Tribe - especially me! Most of the cast disappeared or were killed off, plot lines were abandoned, and the wonderful cliffhanger at the end of season three was completely wasted - and that's before we even get to the whole "cyber" plot. So I decided to have a go at my own season four. Some will disagree with me, but c'est la fandom. I only wish that I could have resurrected Dal. Incidentally, I may have regressed some of the characters, age-wise. Chloe especially grew so much between seasons one and four, but since Brady barely aged at all, that much time can't have passed. So assume that roughly a year has gone by since they all came together in the Mall.

And so - the end of season three. Patsy is missing, 'disappeared' by the Chosen. Ryan is also missing; and Salene, finally realising that she loves him after all, has set out on horseback to find him and bring him home. Ebony has taken over the city with the help of her all-girl heavy mob, the Mozzies, and has exiled Amber and Bray following the escape of the Guardian. As the Guardian himself predicts the coming of great terror - and whilst Bray struggles desperately to help Amber as she goes into labour far too early - an aeroplane sweeps across the city. It's the first aeroplane anybody has seen since the adults died, and as they stare up at it in shock, countless parachutes begin to rain down...

Chapter Text

Bray didn't know what to think when the parachutes came. There was little room for concern for anything other than Amber, lying in the barn and crying for his help; terrified for the baby that was trying to come too early. She was bleeding, and he didn't know what to do for her. They were both far too tired, far too strained from all that had happened recently; from the sham trial, the flight from the city, the long, long walk. He had thought that he was imagining it when the aeroplane had gone overhead; had been certain that it was his own exhaustion playing tricks on him; but when he had gone outside, to see that great, black shape pass over the barn; heard that once familiar roar of the powerful engines directly above; he had known at last that he wasn't dreaming. He had stared at it, wondering, half stupefied, not knowing what to pray for. Adults? Could some of them have survived after all? If there really was an adult at the controls of that aircraft, might he or she be in a position to help Amber? He didn't believe that there was anybody else who could. Wobbling, his legs no longer entirely capable of holding him up, he stared up at the sky and wondered where the aeroplane was going to land - if it was going to land. Amber's cries echoed inside his head, and he wondered what she must be thinking. She must have heard the aeroplane too. He took a step back, intending to go back into the barn; to tell her that there were adults coming, and that everything was going to be alright - and then the parachutes started coming, and his mind again went blank. Parachutes. It was more like an invasion force than a rescue mission.

"Bray?" Amber was calling him. Pleading with him. He started to go back to her. Whoever was coming, whatever they were going to do, it couldn't be as important as helping Amber. He wished that she would stop crying though; that things would sort themselves out. He didn't know what to do when a baby came so very early. How could it possibly survive? How was he going to cope when it didn't? He stumbled on the uneven floor, the interior of the barn shockingly dark after the bright sunshine outside.

"What's going on?" She sounded so weak, so tired. He ran to her as quickly as he could.

"Aeroplane," he told her, exhaustion bringing the New Zealand accent up from the depths of the past, hiding the American that had long ago buried it. "Parachutes."

"Para--" She broke off as a new wave of pain hit her. "Bray... the baby..."

"I know." He scrambled up to take her hand. "I know."

"What are we going to do? It can't be born yet. Bray... there's no special care anymore... It probably... probably wouldn't make any difference if there was. It's too early!"

"I know that." He squeezed her hand rather too tightly, but she didn't notice. "I don't know what to do, Amber! If... if you relax... make sure you don't push. I - I don't know. Maybe there's somebody near here who knows something."

"Nobody knows anything about medicine anymore. Nothing except first aid. No one except Dal--" She broke off then, not wanting to go any further. Bray nodded slowly. The chances were that Dal would have been able to suggest something - or at the very least could have made Amber feel better. Dal had always been the doctor; the one with the good bedside manner. Bray's own skills were rather less practical in the current situation. He could scavenge for food, find safe paths through war zones, wage a guerrilla war against a powerful enemy - but could he comfort his girlfriend in her hour of need? He felt useless. Useless like the days in hospital, watching his parents die. Useless like the days watching Trudy fight infection after the birth of his niece. Useless like that ghastly moment when Zoot had fallen to his death, and Bray had crouched over his body. Maybe he should be hardened to such helplessness by now.

"The parachutes..." She sounded faint; as though the exhaustion was finally taking over, and she was losing her grip on consciousness. "Bray... if they can fly an aeroplane, they might be able to help me. Help the baby. Mightn't they?"

"I don't know." He tried kissing the hand that he still held so tightly, but his lips were too dry. "If you think you can hold on... I might be able to find one of them."

"I have to hold on, don't I!" She was holding his hand just as tightly now as he was holding hers. Her short, sharp fingernails dug into his skin, but he was oblivious to any pain. "Bray, please. We have to try something. Anything."

"I don't know who they are. They might be--"

"I don't care who they are!" She turned her head, slowly and stiffly, staring at him with wild eyes. "Bray, we've all become paranoid since the adults died. We've all stopped trusting everybody else. I know... I know you're suspicious... but we don't have any more choices. Please. Just find somebody who can help."

"Yeah." He nodded, rising to his feet on unsteady legs, having to prise her fingers from his hand. "Yeah, sure. I - I'll find somebody." He stumbled blindly to the door, no longer thinking straight at all. Where were the parachutes likely to have landed? There had been a good many of them. Were they adults? Could they be adults? Trying to whisper prayers to a God he had long ago given up talking to, he ran out into the blinding sun.

"Don't move!" They were all around him; five or six of them at least; black shapes in his sun-drenched eyes. Their voices clamoured and echoed, and he whirled around to listen to them; to try to pinpoint them; waiting for his senses to regain some sort of control. Hands grabbed him then, threw him up against the loose wooden boards of the barn wall.

"Who are you?" His vision was sorting itself out, just in time for a view of nothing but faded white paint clinging to warping wooden planks. "Did you come from the aeroplane?"

"We'll ask the questions." It wasn't an adult voice; at least, wasn't a voice that was any older than his own. He had become so used to thinking of the departed millions as 'the adults'; of the struggling masses who had survived as the 'kids', the 'children' - that he had lost track of the fact that many of those kids were now adults themselves; or near enough. He was eighteen himself now. Old enough to have been taken by the Virus perhaps, if it hadn't eradicated itself, and disappeared. These black-clad shapes that faded in and out of the periphery of his vision were about the same age; about the same size. Not proper adults. Not people who could help him. Not bringers of all the old knowledge and capabilities.

"Who are you? Are you from the city?" He thought it was just the one voice that had asked him the questions, but it had seemed to come from several different directions. He tried to turn around, but they were still holding him fast. Somebody was checking him out for weapons, but he didn't have anything. All he had ever had was his skateboard, and that was back home in the Mall.

"Who are you?" The voice was very insistent, very loud.

"My name is Bray." He tried again to turn to face the voice, but couldn't move. "I'm the - was the - leader of the Mall Rats."

"In the city?"

"Yes in the city!" He struggled again, more forcefully this time. "Listen, my girlfriend, Amber. She's inside. I think she's in labour, and the baby's not supposed to be born for months. She needs help."

"Somebody will do what they can for her." He was spun about again, and finally got a proper look at his attackers. Five of them, dressed in uniform black jump suits; and each with three blue stripes painted with perfect geometrical precision across their left cheek. Definitely a tribe then. Not something more.

"You'll help her?" he asked, still rather disorientated. He didn't seem to have been able to think straight since Ebony's mob had chased him from the city.

"We'll try." The voice was female, and even as it was speaking, its owner was peeling away from the rest of the group, heading towards the doors of the barn. Bray tried to follow, but was held back.

"Not so fast, buddy." The one who had spoken first - some kind of leader perhaps - was looming on the edge of his vision. "You're not going back in there."

"But Amber--" His mind, at last, was clearing, and he started to struggle in earnest. "She needs me."

"No, she needs a medic." The spokesman moved closer, resolving into a tall, athletic young man of about eighteen, with shoulder length blond hair. "And we need you to get us into the city."

"No. I won't leave her." With the return of his senses; of the clarity of thought; came the return of his strength and his stubbornness. He fought back with real energy now, almost breaking free. It was no use. Dragging his hands behind him they fixed them there, with a cold, sharp click of metal. Handcuffs. Very well organised then. Nothing like the half-wild, ragged tribes of the city.

"Oh you'll leave her. We'll do what we can for her, and maybe you'll see her again. In the meantime, you're coming with us. We want to get to the city, and we want to get to whoever's in charge."

"Should have parachuted straight there then, shouldn't you." He met the blond boy's eyes. "Who are you?"

"Racha." The boy smiled; proud, haughty, almost flirtatious. "Second in command of Tribe Fury - and you are going to help us." He leaned in a little closer, and his fathomless black eyes smiled coldly. "Or we won't help you. Now, we didn't drop into the city because we didn't know what the situation there was - and besides, it's not all that safe to drop into a built up area. Instead we dropped units around the circumference of the city. As we speak, they're all closing in. Most of them will have found help on the ground, as we have. And all of them will be converging, bit by bit, on wherever the headquarters of your main tribe happens to be - always supposing that you've managed to advance to the stage where you've actually got one. The city will be ours before anybody knows what's happening."

"You might be surprised. It's a big city. There's a lot of people there. A lot of fighters." He thought of Ebony, and her army of bodyguards. "What do you want there, anyway? The city's a ruin. There's been a civil war going on pretty much since the adults died, and just lately it's been worse than ever. There's nothing worth taking."

"Oh, I think there is." Racha nodded to one of his team, and Bray felt himself being propelled abruptly forward. "Enough talking. Just take us to whoever is in charge."

Ebony. He wondered how she would react to seeing him again, let alone seeing him with these people in tow. How many of the paratroopers had already entered the city? Presumably Ebony would already know something about them. He wondered if he could lead this bunch somewhere else - somewhere where there were people enough to overpower them - but the simple truth was that, right now, if anybody save Ebony or the Mall Rats got hold of him he would likely be dead in seconds. The tribes of the city would rather fight him than drive off these strangers.

"What about Amber?" He tried to look back to the barn, straining his ears for any sound of his girlfriend, or the baby that seemed so desperate to be born. There was nothing, but whether that was for the best or for the worst, he couldn't decide. Nobody bothered to answer his question. Instead they just pushed him forward, faster, harder, until they were all but running back down the path he had taken just a short time before.

And so it was that Bray went back to the city, far sooner than he had imagined, in circumstances that he could never have dreamed. It had been mere hours, but already the atmosphere was different. He had left an angry mob; a triumphant demonstration of power. He returned to terror and chaos.

The exile of Amber and Bray left the remainder of the Mall Rats in decidedly low spirits. How soon before they were next? It would be worse for them too, they reasoned. The only reason Ebony had fought for exile this once was because she had always loved Bray, at least to some degree - otherwise she might well have considered letting the mob have the execution they had been wanting. How could the rest of the Rats hope to be so lucky? Ebony certainly had no reason to fight for their survival.

"We should have done something." Jack kicked restlessly at a screwed up ball of paper - another one of the Chosen's posters, torn down in one of the Rats' periodic attempts to tidy up the Mall. Their Mall. Their home, once. Lex laughed.

"Like what? Anyway, I can't see you fighting for anybody. Nobody stood up to Ebony. Not even me."

"There was nothing anybody could have done, you included. Being angry about it will just be counterproductive." Tai-San took her husband's arm, trying to get through to him. "Our aura is weakened enough as it is. Don't compromise things any further."

"Yeah. Don't want to ruin our auras." Jack ran a hand through his spiky hair. It was red again, Lex noticed, although he didn't quite remember when it had turned that colour. Jack had been a prisoner of the Chosen for so long, at some far away place he hadn't as yet really spoken about, that when he had returned to the city the vibrant red had all but grown out. He looked more like Jack now - the old Jack - save that he seemed so tired. So much of his enthusiasm had been drained away.

"Don't argue." Chloe had been hanging back in the shadows, almost unseen, but she came forward now to stand beside Jack. Everybody was surprised to hear her speak, for she had not often done so in the old days, let alone with such confidence. Lex glared at her, but she met his stare quite evenly. "Look, maybe we should have helped Bray and Amber - but we didn't. Maybe there's something we can do now instead? Like changing Ebony's mind? She could persuade everybody to let them come home, if she really wanted to."

"But she's not going to, is she." Lex spoke without patience, rather annoyed that it was Chloe who was trying to take the initiative. Chloe was just a kid, even if she did seem to have grown up a lot, during her own private experience at the hands of the Chosen. "Bray is her rival, remember. He and Amber are probably the only other people who have a chance of running the city. Right now everybody's against them, but in time, when that anger's died away, they might remember who it was that got the antidote for the Virus, and led the charge against the Chosen. Ebony doesn't want that kind of a threat to her leadership, does she." Something else occurred to him. "You know, with the Chosen gone, the old tribes are going to reform. People will remember what it was like before. Power and chaos, the fear, the fighting. They might also remember that Ebony was a Loco, and the chances are they're not going to be so happy about having her in charge then. No way is she going to want her main rivals back."

"All the more reason to bring them back then," pointed out Chloe. Jack shook his head.

"Bray never wanted to be a leader," he pointed out. "He always had this self-sufficiency idea, didn't he - back in the old days I mean. He didn't especially want to stay here in the Mall then. What makes you think he'd want to return to the city? You're just dreaming, Chloe. Either we get the best we can with Ebony in charge, or we split. Leave the city to its own devices."

"The city is our home." Chloe's patience and calm was astounding - her voice so steady and determined that even Lex looked impressed. "I won't leave." She frowned, and for a second her new maturity was gone. "Besides, if we leave how will the others know where to find us?"

"Others?" asked Lex, though he knew well enough who she meant. She glared.

"Patsy. The Chosen took her away, but Jack and I came back. Why shouldn't she? She'll come back here, and we should be here when she does. And Salene and Ryan. When they find each other they're going to come home, aren't they."

"I'm sure they will, Chloe." Tai-San spoke gently, the way she had when Chloe had been so much smaller, and they had been defending the Mall together against the Locos and Tribe Circus. Chloe's dark eyes spat sparks at her.

"Don't patronise me. They're coming back. You'll see. All of them."

"Yeah." Jack looked away, so that the others couldn't see his face. Dal wasn't coming back even if the others did, and sometimes that was a sorrow that was impossible to bear. "All of them."

"This is foolish." Tai-San walked forward, into the middle of the room. "We're all gathered here, looking into the past and dreaming of the future. We should be creating that future, not waiting for it to create itself. That aeroplane--"

"If it was an aeroplane," Jack told her. "Just because it sounded like one..."

"It was something." She interrupted him neatly, and with a sharp little smile. "And whatever it was, I feel sure that it's to be a forerunner of change. These little signs, when they're sent, shouldn't be ignored. We should go outside and find out what's happening."

"KC and Pride went out." Lex sounded strangely uninterested. "People were screaming about the adults coming back, and KC wanted to take a look. I guess Pride was feeling pretty restless too."

"I wonder if they've found anything out." Chloe went over to the main door, but she couldn't see anything from inside. The streets looked deserted though, which seemed strange. They hadn't been that empty since the days of the Chosen's random round ups, long weeks before.

"They'll tell us if they have," Lex was still distant, disinterested, detached. Tai-San frowned at him, a little concerned. They were all so separate just at the moment. So many of their number had left or been stolen away. They had to come together again, those who were left, and find their unity. Otherwise the tribe would collapse.

"Perhaps we should all go out together," she suggested. "Meet up with KC and Pride, and investigate this as a tribe? Alice will be useful. Ellie too. She's become good at asking questions since starting up the newspaper. Where are they?"

"Gone." It was Jack who answered, since nobody else knew what had happened. He didn't sound happy. Clearly this was one more thing that was getting him down, suppressing his once natural good cheer. "Alice was feeling pretty bad, with everything that happened. You know - Ned being killed, and her trying to kill the Guardian and all. And Ellie was... well I suppose she was in love with Luke after all. And now he's gone, and I was pretty cross with her..." He shrugged. "They said they were going back to their farm. Took the kids with them too - Andy and Tally. Alice felt responsible for them I guess."

"More departures." Tai-San was not impressed. "Ebony doesn't need to exile us to tear us apart. We're all exiling ourselves."

"Yeah." Jack shifted restlessly. "And who cares anyway? We haven't been a tribe since the Chosen came."

"We've always been a tribe." Tai-San stared him down, then came over to stand in front of him. "We make each other stronger, Jack. With Bray and Amber gone, and Ebony in charge, we face uncertain times. We need each other, and we need the strength we give to each other. Maybe some of us need it even more than the rest."

"Yeah, sure." Jack stood up, obviously having heard all that he wanted to. "I'll be in the lab. It's still in a mess, and if I'm going to stay I have to get it all sorted out."

"Do you want any help?" asked Chloe. He stared at her for a moment, almost as though the question hadn't registered, then shook his head and left. He hadn't spoken because he hadn't trusted himself to; had given her a negative answer not because he didn't need any help, but because the only help he wanted was Dal's. At least if he was on his own in the lab he could still talk to his friend; still act as though they were together in the room that had been theirs. He didn't want anybody else there to spoil that.

"Jack has many problems," observed Tai-San, as soon as the boy had left the room. Lex nodded.

"Yeah, and are you surprised? His best friend dies, his girlfriend leaves - and we have no idea what happened to him when the Chosen took him away." He looked troubled. "Any more than we know what's happened to Ryan."

"Or Patsy," put in Chloe, who of all of them at least had some idea. Tai-San sighed.

"And it's because of such problems, such worries and such absences that we have to be strong now. Strong for each other. Strong for those of us who are missing."

"But maybe it won't matter now." Chloe wandered back over to join them, giving up on trying to see out into the street. "If that was an aeroplane that we heard, then maybe it was being flown by adults. If they're back then we don't need to be strong anymore. They'll put everything right. They might even find Patsy and the others."

"Chloe, you know that there aren't any adults left." Lex heard footsteps, and turned towards the door. "Right KC?"

"Right." The younger boy arrived in the doorway exactly on cue, although neither Chloe nor Tai-San had noticed his approach. Clearly his ability to sneak about had only improved with age. He crossed the room, throwing himself down onto the less than comfortable wall of the fountain, and breathed out a long sigh. "It's crazy out there. Whole streets deserted, the others full of people. There's panic everywhere."

"Panic?" Chloe went to stand beside him, eager to hear what he had to say, but he seemed to be waiting for a prompt from Lex before he continued. The Mall Rats' one time head of security seemed deep in thought, though, and gave no such signal.

"Nice to know you care so much about information we might have risked our lives for." Striding into the Mall with his usual steady speed, Pride tossed down the stick he had taken as a possible weapon, then nodded a strangely polite greeting to Tai-San and Chloe. There would always be a courteousness about Pride, no matter how outdated it might be, but neither girl particularly appreciated it. Such things were unimportant to Tai-San, and Chloe, who had not yet really got to know Pride, still wasn't sure what to make of him. Lex was, and he scowled at the other boy's manner.

"Fine. So what did you see?" he asked. KC brightened immediately. All of the time that had passed, and all of the things he had seen, had not dampened his old childlike devotion to Lex.

"Panic," he said, with a strange sort of relish. KC, of course, had never been one for order and calm. "That aeroplane was dropping parachutes. Some people are saying that it's the adults coming back, like they'd just gone away or something, and not all died. The kids are going crazy. It's like... I don't know. Like they're scared."

"They're like naughty kids whose parents have just come home," clarified Pride. "All the things they've done since society collapsed - they seem to think they're going to be in trouble for it. They're going crazy. Then there are others who are predicting the end of the world, or of the city at any rate. Seems there have been rumours for some days now, about a coming threat. Something worse than the Chosen. Terror worse than any inspired by Zoot." He shrugged. "Well if it's terror they want, they're getting it. There's fighting going on like I've never seen before. Whole streets in uproar. Madness."

"It's like it used to be," KC interjected, a little annoyed that Pride had stolen his thunder. "When Zoot was still alive, and everybody was still fighting all the time. Like everything else since then hadn't happened. Everything that was supposed to have brought us all together. And all because of some stupid aeroplane."

"Not just because of the plane," pointed out Pride. "It's the parachutes that have everybody spooked. Nobody knows how many there were, but word is they rained down all over, like they were encircling the city. I saw a few come down out to the north, but I can't say they looked all that scary."

"You're not the panicking type," pointed out Tai-San. "Did you see Ebony?"

"No. She's keeping quiet, probably waiting to see what her people can find out." Pride looked over at Lex. "You'd think she'd be wanting her sheriff involved."

"Ebony isn't interested in involving me in anything. I'm only sheriff in name now." Lex wanted to sulk, but couldn't quite manage it. How had so much managed to change in so few hours? "I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what happens. Close the main door, KC. I don't want any fighting spilling in here, when we're just starting to get the place sorted out at last."

"I'll find Trudy. Somebody should tell her what's going on." Tai-San headed for the stairs. "I'm assuming that she's still here?"

"Where else is she going to go with that baby in tow?" Lex, as usual, didn't sound terribly sympathetic. "Besides, with the way that the Chosen used them both, it probably isn't safe for them out there yet. They're lucky they weren't thrown out of the city too."

"I don't think that Ebony would do that to Zoot's child." For somebody who had never known Zoot, nor observed Ebony in his presence, Tai-San had an impressive grasp of their relationship, at least as Ebony herself had seen it. "But that's immaterial. We may still have to protect them from the rest of the city."

"I think the rest of the city's got other things on its mind." KC got up, going off to obey Lex's command about the doors. "Whoever jumped out of that plane, Lex, they're bound to be coming to the city aren't they?"

"I think we can bet on it." Lex didn't care. Confrontation had always been one of his greatest talents. Pride didn't look quite so confident.

"Aeroplanes, parachutes... I don't like the way this is sounding. It's as if we got rid of one enemy just to be faced with a worse one."

"They're not necessarily the enemy," KC pointed out, hauling on the pulley system that controlled the security door. Pride fixed him with one of his piercing stares.

"How many friendly tribes have you met, KC? And if they are an enemy, they're probably the most organised one we're likely to meet. How are we going to fight them - supposing we have to - with the equipment they obviously have? They have an aeroplane - a military one so people are saying, and I suppose it'd have to be to have dropped so many parachutes. Well what if they have bombs as well? Something must have happened to all of the weapons that there used to be. The soldiers died, but their equipment didn't just disappear. It's a wonder nobody's tried to use it before."

"The Locos raided all the police stores," mused Lex. Chloe nodded, clearly unhappy.

"And remember what they were like. It took the Chosen to take them down. That and the truce over the antidote to the Virus. If these other people have military stuff..."

"We'll worry about that when it happens." Lex was sliding back into battle mode, ready and waiting even without knowing whether there was going to be a battle for him to fight. Fighting was what he did best - what he had always done best. Wars were always easier to deal with than the peace that came so erratically in between them.

"Maybe Bray and Amber are the lucky ones after all," mused Pride. Lex scowled.

"Yeah, well they're out of it right enough. Time to stop worrying about them. For now, I say we get this place secure again, like it used to be. The best safe house in the city. Right?"

"Right." KC was with him, as usual. Pride, ever the man of peace, didn't look so sure, and Tai-San and Trudy, emerging at the top of the stairs, looked even less enthusiastic. Chloe was no better. Lex didn't think that Jack would be terribly happy either, but that was just hard luck. They would all have to make the best of this. He was going to see that the Mall was defended, and then he was going to head out into the streets to see exactly what it needed to be defended against. Already he felt much happier. Ebony was yesterday's problem, like the Chosen, and in place of his concerns about what she might do, was a brewing situation it seemed that he could really enjoy. Maybe he could still play sheriff after all.

Chapter Text

It seemed a longer walk back, but then the way out of the city had been something of a dream; a blur of wordless stumbling, trying to make sense of what had happened. Going back there was no chance of a similar retreat into such mindlessness, although the general sense of confusion still remained. The cuffs on his wrists were too tight, he was being hurried along at the pace of a military speed march, Racha was barking questions at him every few seconds. He didn't answer most of them, and he played dumb about who was in charge in the city, although he didn't think that Racha believed in his ignorance. Maybe it was stupid to try to protect Ebony, but he wouldn't have felt good about directing this lot right to her door. Not that there weren't plenty of other people who were probably doing exactly that right now. All those other units, all 'recruiting' local assistance, the way that Racha and his group had found him. Ebony had her bodyguards - a collection of muscle from half a dozen belligerent former tribes, her loyal staff of Mozzies, traitors from the Chosen and embittered one time Strays - who would probably put up a good fight at first. They might even win the first few struggles. It couldn't last though. It hadn't escaped Bray's notice that his guards carried guns. Real guns, sleek and black and large. In the city they had sticks and bicycle chains; a few knives that had escaped the Chosen's attempt at disarming the masses. Some people - the kind who had been fighting each other in street wars long before the Virus had torn society away - even had zip guns; but few people had anything else. A pistol or two; the occasional shot gun, mostly no longer with shells; Zoot had had a police issue revolver once upon a time. He thought about that aeroplane; about the girl who had thought that she might be medic enough to help Amber; about this perfectly executed speed march; and knew that there was real organisation here. Military organisation. If it came to a fight it would be like going up against the real army.

"Where do we go once reach the city?" Racha's question caught him by surprise, dragging him out of his miserable thoughts, and he almost answered. Only at the last moment did he remind himself to remain silent. Racha smiled.

"You think that I believe you, don't you. You think that you can pretend you don't know anything."

"I don't know anything." Bray had thought that he was in good shape - was in good shape - but the pace was killing, and it was getting harder to talk. Racha shook his head, still smiling, bright eyes still shining with that strange glimmer that was almost a flirtation.

"You told me that you were the leader of your tribe. But you still insist that you don't know who the most powerful person is? Who controls the city? You can't have been a very effective leader if you don't know something like that."

"Then maybe you'd better let me go back to Amber. I can't be much use to you."

"Oh, I think you can." Racha's smile hadn't wavered. If there was a way to frustrate him, clearly it wasn't in protestations and excuses. "But maybe you'd rather we asked another member of your tribe to help us? Somebody else that you care about?" Bray met his gaze with a flare of contempt.

"You'd never find them." He wasn't sure if he was trying to provoke a reaction; if he wanted to make Racha angry. An outburst, even a fight, might be a good way to break though his own mental fog; to drive out some of his own churning rages. It wouldn't be much of a fight, with the handcuffs to hold him back, but maybe if Racha hit him hard enough he wouldn't have to worry about Amber for a while. The blond boy merely laughed.

"Mall Rats, you said you were called. At a guess, then, I'd say we were looking for a mall."

"It's a big city. There's a lot of malls."

"Maybe. Just have to see, won't we. Maybe there'll be somebody in the city who'll tell us where to look. What do you think, Bray? Do the people down there know where you live?"

"What is this?" Bray came to a halt, causing the perfectly spaced Furies to swerve in well ordered precision. Did they practice such manoeuvres, he wondered? Maybe you trained for every eventuality in an army. "What the hell do you want?"

"Just information. We're being good neighbours. Showing an interest in the community. After all, we're going to be living in the city as well from now on."

"I don't live in the city."

"Oh yes you do." Racha gave him a shove to get him moving again. "Your exile has been revoked."

"Who says we were exiled?" He tried to stop again, but couldn't. They were closer around him now, and he couldn't stop unless they did. Not unless he wanted to be trampled. "Maybe we were just starting fresh."

"Then why were the two of you holed up in that barn, with her the way she was? You said your baby was coming, and way too early. Well if you could have done, you'd have gone to the city for help."

"Not if I didn't want to leave her."

"Irrelevant." Racha ran on a little further, beaming happily all the while, clearly enjoyng the fun that he was having at Bray's expense. "You'd have had to have done something for her, whether you wanted to leave or not, and there's nowhere but the city to go to for help. There are no other settlements for miles. So are you going to tell me why you were exiled? Might make a nice story."

"Get lost."

"But you're not denying it anymore. Our deductions are always right, Bray. We pick up on everything. We're always on the alert."

"Perfectly trained little soldier." He couldn't keep the hatred from his voice, although it sounded more like contempt. Still he didn't seem to have made Racha angry.

"Don't you forget it. I became a cadet when the Virus was just a twinkle in somebody's test tube. Long before the accidents and the cover ups and the dying ever started. I was the top of my year, every year. Everybody in my family was in the army, back as long as anyone can remember."

"You must have been delighted when society got wiped out." This time it was definitely contempt in his voice, alongside the anger. Racha looked at him askance.

"Glad? Not exactly. I miss my parents same as anybody else. But I relish the challenge, yes. This is a world ripe for a take-over, and my people and I are the ones to do it. We have the power, the weapons, the organisation." He came to a halt, and the rest of the group stopped neatly alongside him. "While the rest of you have been fighting amongst yourselves, having your little civil wars, starving, enslaving each other - we've been training. Practising. Planning. You've been scratching for enough food to live on - we've been collecting weapons, equipment, ammunition." Once again he broke into a run, and Bray almost fell when he was pressed rather suddenly to do likewise. "Wait and see, Bray. Your city will be ours almost before the people down there have realised that we're among them."

"It's a tough city. You might be surprised." Bray was thinking about the Chosen, who had also believed themselves to be unbeatable. They had been well organised too, and he had certainly learnt that to his cost. The Chosen had been beaten though, even if it had taken the odd alliance of Lex, Ebony and himself to do it. An awkward and fractious combination, but they had won through in the end. Or muddled through perhaps, with their uncertain attacks and their stabs in the dark.

"A tough city, huh." Racha laughed, and Bray didn't like the sound at all. It reminded him of something. Not the Guardian's humourless chuckle, nor Zoot's wild but happy laugh. It was more like Top Hat; confident beyond the point of absurdity, laughing at everything and nothing, and managing to be filled with equal measures of humour and hate. A laugh that spelt trouble.

"We've fought off tyrants before."

"Tyrants? We're not tyrants, Bray. We don't need to be. Tyrants control through fear, but we're too strong to need that. Tyrants stamp out resistance, but once we're in power there will be no resistance. It's not possible to fight us. Your friends down there will see that eventually."

"They're not my friends."

"Maybe. More irrelevancy, though, wouldn't you say?"

"Whatever." It was easy to feign disinterest in the fate of the city dwellers. They had driven him out, after everything he had done for them. Driven him out, and maybe killed his girlfriend and his baby in the process. It was almost easy to convince even himself that he cared nothing. Racha clearly wasn't bothered either way.

"Care, don't care. It won't matter soon anyway." He gave another short burst of his unsettling laugh, then gestured about them. "Buildings. I think we're arriving." He raised a hand, and the band slowed to a wary, but perfectly measured, walk. "I wonder if any of our other units have reached your city HQ yet?"

"We're being watched." Another of the tribe, his back to Racha, was scanning the streets with eagle eyes. "Sandstone building to the right, three people. White building to your rear, two people. There's half a dozen in the ruin to the left."

"Then let's say hello." Racha turned in a slow circle. "Go for the sandstone. Structure looks better. I don't want to cause too much damage at this stage."

"Right." His confederate nodded smartly, then took something from the bulky belt that was strapped across his chest. It was metallic and rounded, roughly the size of a tennis ball. Bray stared at it in shock.

"That's a grenade."

"Yeah." The boy who held it was about seventeen, with close-cropped auburn hair, and the sort of sunglasses favoured by secret service types in so many of the films of the old world. He was expressionless, and he held the small bomb like an expert.

"But you can't--"

"Watch me." He spun neatly on one heel, striding towards the sandstone building like the soldier he clearly believed himself to be. Despite his horror Bray didn't try to stop him. He knew that there was nothing he could do. Instead he watched, almost with the air of detachment that he might have had for a scene playing out on the television, whilst the boy, dispassion incarnate, reached the middle of the wide, empty street. Coming to a snappy halt he pulled the grenade's pin, drew back his arm, and threw his little missile with perfect aim through a broken window. He didn't retreat; none of them did, although Bray couldn't help tensing, ready to flinch away. There was silence; he thought he heard feet running on bare floorboards. He opened his mouth for something; he wasn't sure what. To shout a warning? Express his disbelief? Whatever it was, he never made it as far as speech, for with a roar of sound and air the grenade exploded. He saw glass shatter; dust rise; bricks crack. The ground rumbled, though faintly, the grenade not powerful enough to cause more than basic vibrations at a distance. Even so there were shouts inside the building; a frightened yell; then the clear sounds of somebody escaping out of a back way. Racha nodded in satisfaction.

"They survived. Good. That means the message will get around more quickly. The witnesses in these other buildings will be too scared to go out for a while."

"Are you crazy?" Bray turned on him, wishing that his hands were free even if there was nothing much that he could have done with them. "You don't know how many people were in that building. You might have killed some. There might be people in there now needing help!"

"This is a display of power. Casualties are just hard luck." Racha gestured for his companion to rejoin them. "Now Archer here has another two grenades on him; the rest of us still have three each. We can use them anywhere, and we will - unless you take us to whoever has the greatest power within this city. It's as simple as that, Bray. Whoever it is, you seem to care about them. Well if that's true you'd better tell me where they are, quickly, because I can't promise that my colleagues aren't using their own grenades to secure the area right now. I'll make sure that the chief is taken unhurt - the other units might have other ideas. Right?"

"Right." He said it automatically, eyes still full of the explosion. He imagined Ebony's hotel under such attack; the rubble, the dust, the noise. Ebony didn't deserve that - nobody did. He couldn't risk anybody else getting hurt either; any further innocent tribes that Racha might decide to make an example of.

"Good." The blond boy folded his arms, warm, friendly eyes once more aglow. "So go on then. Where's the centre of ops?"

"Check that building first. See if there's anybody in there who needs--"

"No point. Every unit has one medic, and we left ours with your girlfriend. There's nothing we can do for anybody inside there. Just forget about them."

"Forget them?" He stared over at the building, and the clouds of dust still drifting from the shattered window. He couldn't hear anything else. No shouting, no sounds of people in need of help. Not that that was necessarily a good sign.

"Forget them." Racha put a hand on his shoulder, smile growing ever more warm, ever more encouraging. He was a charming fellow, certainly; or he could be. "Headquarters, Bray. The city's main building. How far is it from here?"

"Not far. If we don't run into trouble..." He trailed off momentarily. Of course they weren't going to run into trouble. Even if it did try to rear its head along their route, this bunch would handle it without breaking their stride. "Half an hour maybe. Less, if you're going to run again."

"Then lead the way." He stepped aside, gesturing for Bray to move out. "Where are we going?"

"A hotel near the beach." Bray was furious, with himself as much as with his captors. "Not a big place, but big enough."

"Many guards?"

"Usually at least half a dozen out front. More inside. There are others who'll be off duty but still on the premises."

"Armed?"

"Are you kidding?" He looked back at them, with their guns and their grenades, and their identical, uniform clothing. No, they weren't kidding - to them it was a sensible question. "No, they're not armed; at least, not the way you mean. They have clubs, chains, bottles; some home-made stuff. That's all."

"Shouldn't take us long then, should it." Racha pushed him. "Keep leading the way. No need to stop."

"I want your word. Before I go any further, I want you to promise that you're not going to hurt anybody. No more throwing grenades about."

"Bray, Bray, Bray." Racha was all smiles, and those deep, black eyes shone with immeasurable charm. "We don't want to hurt anybody. Of course we don't. But we're not making any promises."

"You have enough firepower to take the whole city in a few hours. Just threats should be enough. You don't have to--"

"Yeah, we do." Archer seemed to take exception to extra talking, and clearly believed that they had more important things to do. "This is war. We're taking over this city, and revolutions don't tend to be bloodless."

"They can be as bloodless as you want them to be. You don't have to kill anybody."

"Just get moving." Archer drew out his gun, a perfect match for the sleek, black weapon that Racha carried less ostentatiously. "Or we'll start by killing you."

"I'd do as he says if I were you." Racha's smile made his eyes crinkle warmly, and his thick lashes fluttered briefly in the familiar, flirtatious way he seemed to so enjoy. "At the double."

"Yeah." Bray was subdued; eager now for this just to be over. Maybe, if he took these people to the hotel, there would at least be some answer in the end. Perhaps then he could find out what this was all about; who these people were; what they wanted in the city. Whether or not the multitude of divided tribes were about to face the threat of another dictator even worse than the Chosen's insane Guardian. Feet feeling strangely heavy, he led the way forward, through the battered streets he had roamed so often. He chose those roads that he knew were likely to be empty, for he had no wish to let his captors come into contact with anybody else until it became unavoidable. He heard shouts in the distance, and knew that the people of the city were out and about. They were celebrating the fall of the Chosen still perhaps, or partying in honour of Ebony. Perhaps they had seen the black rain of parachutes, and were coming out to see what was happening - in which case he hoped that they soon went back inside. They were sitting targets otherwise, especially if the other converging units of Tribe Fury held any more people like Archer. He listened to their echoing shouts, and remembered the voices of whoever had been inside that sandstone building. People he had helped to free from one nightmare. People who were probably about to face another. He wondered where the Mall Rats were in all of this; whether they had heard the aeroplane, seen the parachutes. Whether they were out in the streets, or even at the hotel, facing whatever fate was coming to Ebony. He thought again of other places where he could lead his Furies; but if there were other units already converging on the hotel, what was the point? And besides, where could he lead them? It wasn't as though the city was brimming was allies, ready to help him spring a clever trap.

"I think we can go a little faster, don't you?" There was cruel enjoyment mixed with Racha's good cheer now; a hint of real sadism that all his bright charm couldn't off-set. The little band moved up a gear instantly, their perfectly rehearsed marching sweeping Bray along without a hope. The city moved past in a blur then, the familiar streets ebbing away into a rush of mixed thoughts. There was no clarity; not for him. Instead just pounding feet, rushing winds, and fast approaching disaster. Helpless and hopeless, he knew that he was probably delivering death to Ebony's front door - riding at the crest of a wave that was the antithesis of her mantra of power and chaos. The antithesis; but not entirely the opposite, for it was as evil as anything that Zoot had ever planned. He wished he had never seen the aeroplane; never become a part of this. Maybe then the city, and his friends, could crash onwards into this next maelstrom without him having to know about it. It would be easier then. Instead he let Racha drag him on, with no choice but to wait and see what would happen - and hope that Ebony's luck was infinitely better than his.

In her capacity as new ruler of the city; a rank and position that even Zoot had never been able to do more than dream about; Ebony had everything that she could have wanted. Everything, that was, save a willing Bray at her side; but even she was willing to accept that she couldn't always have everything. She was relaxed for the first time in a long while, as she sunned herself by the hotel's gleaming pool; freshly cleaned out by her newest set of minions. There was no longer any electricity to run the pool's pump system of course, and under the Chosen's unimaginative rule the blue water had turned grey - but all it took was a dynamo and a few willing, or less willing, kids on exercise bikes, and things were easily returned to normal. The equipment was still in place from the days when the Locos had owned the hotel, and slave labour had powered the dynamo. It had been like a homecoming to return to it all; to order her followers to tidy the place up properly, drag the litter from the swimming pool, get the filter working again. Now the tables and deck chairs, the bright sunshades and beach mats, were out again; she could sit outside with a tall glass of fruit juice and rest easy in the knowledge that she was secure behind an army of bodyguards. Secure, that was, up to a point.

She had heard the aeroplane like everybody else, and hadn't been fool enough to doubt what the noise was likely to mean. She had left her hard earned place by the pool and gone to the roof, where a telescope, set up long ago by her one-time lieutenant, Spike, gave a good view of much of the city. She saw the plane as it banked out towards the further limits of the city; saw the first scattering of parachutes; and heard the first screams from her subjects. Even then, in those earliest moments, the fears and the theories were obvious. The adults were returning; the Chosen were returning; Zoot was bringing an army to conquer them all. Doomsday had come. She dismissed all of those theories straight away, but she despatched envoys to see what could be found out. Somebody had to discover who really had come from the skies. Whoever it was must have knowledge and abilities that were beyond those of the local people, that much was clear - and Ebony did not plan to lose control of the city she had so recently won. She returned to the pool to make plans, and waited to see what her envoys brought back to her. She waited for a long time, but the envoys brought her nothing. As it turned out, she never saw any of them again.

For the city, the panic set in gradually, after the initial terror had worn away. When death and destruction didn't come immediately, superstition gave way to a more rational kind of fear, and a curiosity that led people back out into the streets that they had earlier abandoned. Ebony could hear them milling about outside the walls. Some were shouting to her to come out and address the populace; tell them what she knew. She wasn't ready yet to tell them that she didn't know anything, so she stayed where she was, and waited, and wondered, and tried to make plans. If the people from the aeroplane were an invasion force then it made sense to assume that they would come to the hotel sooner or later. Somebody would tell them that she was in charge here; that the hotel was the heart of the city. She had faith in her guard, though. They had more knives and chains and clubs; more muscle, more strength and more determination than most of the city's ordinary people. Nobody could take the hotel. She believed that right up until she heard the first distant sounds of gunfire - and then, at last, she knew that she was in real trouble. They all were. Even the Locos themselves couldn't fight against bullets and win.

For a long time she stood up on the roof, at first relying on the telescope, and then just her unaided eyes. She saw little groups of people, each one apparently led by a prisoner - some local that was usually a splash of ragged colour against the uniform black of their captors. She saw occasional skirmishes; heard the rattle of further gunfire. She saw death. It was something distant and strange; something that couldn't really be happening, but was. An army had come to her city, and was unquestionably converging now on the hotel. They had come for her, and she knew without a shadow of a doubt that if they reached the hotel with her still inside it, those guns would make short work of her. They would want to get rid of the city's leader. Her guards would hold out - an hour maybe, or possibly two - and then the defences were sure to fail. Ebony knew all about fighting and sieges, and firepower and limitations. Her apprenticeship under Zoot during the great war against the Demon Dogs had taught her all of that. Announcing her intention to walk abroad, and see for herself what was happening, she ordered her guards to hold the fort; took a day's food and the best knife she could find, and slipped out into the clamouring streets. Nobody noticed her even with her distinctive appearance, for the people were past calling for her now. They had returned to their earlier state of mindless panic, and were merely awaiting their fate. Cattle, she thought, certain that they deserved what they got. She wasn't going to stand around and wait for whatever was coming. She was smarter than that.

She stuck to the shadows at first; took tiny alleys and back streets; crept through burnt out shells of buildings still daubed with the graffiti of before the Virus, as well as that of after. She clambered over low walls, avoided milling crowds, listened out for unwanted company, and all the time built up an image of things as she went. She saw dead bodies; crowds herded along by the oncoming invaders. She heard whispers and rumours of countless attackers, with weapons unseen since the days before the adults had all died. She saw people fleeing for cover, desperate to find themselves somewhere to hide, clearly convinced that discovery would mean death. It was disheartening, and she spat curses at the universe for throwing such trials her way. How on earth was she supposed to deal with this? Finally, after taking a circuitous route that eventually brought her back within sight of the hotel, she found herself a suitable vantage point from which to look out on all that was going to happen. She had to see it, even though she felt sure that she should be going far away. It was still her city; her domain. She had to see if it was all going to end.

They came in their little groups, each with their captured local. A shower of black uniforms, gun-toting teenagers, and cowed and handcuffed city dwellers. A few other locals got in the way - most were shot down. There seemed no pattern to it; just a random scattering of bullets. Nobody seemed to care if they were killing or just wounding. They merely wanted to clear a path to the hotel. She knew straight away what would happen then, and she wasn't proved wrong. A member of each unit pushed the little band of handcuffed guides forward; and each one was taken out with cold precision. A bullet in the back of the head; even Ebony was shocked at the sight of it. She had killed, in her various battles within this city. She had seen death almost every day of her life since the Virus had first swept amongst them all. But this was something else, and it chilled her to the bone. Kids with guns; kids killing without passion. She wanted to shiver, but she couldn't seem to move. Not until she saw what seemed to be the last of the units arriving - and saw the local they had taken as their guide. The world zoomed into sharp focus, and she ceased to breathe.

Bray. He was looking about him with a detached kind of hopelessness - an emptiness that showed he was finding it hard to assimilate everything he was seeing. Dead kids, dying kids; writhing bodies covered in blood. Seven handcuffed bodies, all neatly executed - all screaming his own fate straight at him. An auburn-haired boy pushed him to his knees, and Ebony's heart leaped into her throat. They were so many, and she didn't risk her life against that kind of odds. Not ever. Not for her fellow Locos, not for her fellow Mall Rats, not for Bray. The auburn-haired kid was raising his gun, pointing it at the back of Bray's head. Bray wasn't struggling, wasn't trying to get away or plead for his life. He was just staring at the other bodies; listening to the sounds of gunfire, thinking about the other units that now had the hotel under siege. The world had seemed to slow down; Ebony was sure that her pulse had stopped. The gun was pressing against the back of Bray's skull, she couldn't see the auburn-haired boy's face - and then she was running, and falling, and hitting the kid low, tumbling with him in a mad mess of limbs that somehow righted itself instantly. She heard a shout - the boy on his feet already, staring down at her, expression furious. How was that possible? How did he come to have regained his balance so soon? She was like a cat herself, with her grace and acrobatic skill, and even she was not yet ready to roll to her feet. She stared up at a face, partly hidden by mirrored sunglasses, and saw a hard mouth tightening into a line - saw a gun staring straight down at her. Voices were echoing around. A boy with blond hair swam into view, shining eyes a picture of merry laughter that for some reason made her want to choke - then Bray cannoned into the auburn boy; the blond boy made a grab for them both; somebody's gun went off. There was a shout of something like pain - she didn't think it was Bray's voice - and then she was on her feet, lashing out wildly, hitting anything that didn't seem to be Bray. People were cursing; in the corner of her eye she saw another gun being brought to bear; then somebody crashed into somebody else and the gun fell away. She wasn't even sure what she was doing when she grabbed Bray by the collar; when she dragged him away through rows of long-toppled rubbish bins; fell over a low wall; stumbled and hurtled down a tiny, almost too thin alley. She couldn't hear anything anymore, save for the rush of blood in her ears. She didn't know anything until she was bursting into the old paint factory, falling through the half-hinged door, collapsing on the wide, bare floor of grey tiles. Bray fell beside her, and they lay there gasping for breath. Everything else was agony.

"They... they might be coming." It was all that she could say, and although she thought she heard the words, she still wasn't sure if she had really said them; let alone said them correctly. Bray tried to get up, and failed.

"No. We can't be that important. They want the hotel." He turned towards her, his dark eyes as serious as they always seemed to be when he looked at her. "You're not in there."

"You noticed. Fighting losing battles is hardly my scene, is it. I got out as soon as I realised what was coming." She sat up, breath and strength returning with true clarity of thought. "And thanks for leading them straight to my place, incidentally."

"I didn't have much choice. They have grenades. They were killing people." He broke off to listen to the rattle of gunfire. Not that they weren't killing people now as well. It sounded like a full scale massacre. "Your people?"

"They're still in the hotel. The Mozzies would never surrender to anybody." She drew in a deep breath and forced herself up, going to the door to look out into the streets. She could see no sign of the carnage from here, but the volume grew louder when she put her head through the gap in the door. Screams, crashes, the sharp bark of orders. Yells of triumph and the occasional explosion. Grenades. Real, actual grenades. How the hell were they supposed to stand up to that?

"Get these handcuffs off." Bray was struggling up, and she glanced back at him, concerned by the heat of determination in his eyes.

"I'm not sure that I don't trust you more with them on," she told him. After the way in which they had last parted company, she definitely felt that there was something to be said for the cuffs. He glared.

"I have to get back to Amber."

"Out of the city?" She shook her head. "You'd never make it. How many of those people are out there? How many parachutes were dropped? There could be a lot more of these soldiers outside of the city, and if they're half as tough as this bunch, none of us stands a chance."

"She needs me!"

"She needs you to stay alive." Ebony went back to him, turning him around to have a look at the cuffs. Standard issue. It wouldn't take her long to pick the lock. "No heroics, Bray. Not yet. We have to find out what's going on first. Agreed?"

"What do you suggest?" He didn't like the fact that she was behind him, and that he couldn't see what she was doing. She knew that he didn't trust her, and that amused her. Had the circumstances been different; had her pulse not still been racing, she might have smiled.

"We should get to the Mall. It's unlikely to be a high priority on anybody's take-over list. There are people there that we trust, and we know that we can hold out against an attack there for a while at least. There's a good rear exit if we get into trouble - and Lex and Pride ought to give us at least a fighting chance. Extra muscles, even if it is the annoying kind. Right?"

"Yeah." he nodded, though listlessly. "Okay. Sure."

"And then, when we're all together, we'll think about what to do next. We'll have more chance of fighting as a group, and maybe then we can get to Amber."

"You don't care about Amber."

"No." She pulled off his cuffs, and turned him around quite gently. "But I don't want to get killed; not after everything I've been though trying to make my life worth living again. I don't want you dead either, or you'd already be that way. We stick together, for safety's sake; and if you're going after Amber, I'm going with you. Is she a long way out of the city?"

"Yeah. Quite a way."

"Then all the more reason to go. This place doesn't seem nearly so safe as it did this morning."

"It didn't feel so safe this morning, either. Not for some of us."

She sighed. "Hey, come on. All's fair in love and... well, whatever it is we've got. I had to do something."

"She's pregnant!" He was angry now, and shouted without thought of Tribe Fury. Ebony's own anger flared up in response.

"I was trying to save your lives! The Mozzies wanted to lynch you!"

"She went into labour!" He was furious now; grabbed her shoulders; stopped short of shaking her only when a wave of worry and fear for Amber crashed over him once again. "She went into labour, and there was nothing I could do. Then Tribe Fury came and took me away, and she's up there somewhere in the hills, and I don't even know if she'll survive. The way they're killing people here, why would they bother to look after her? They said they would, but..." He trailed off, releasing her and turning away. "They could both be dead by now."

"She went into labour?" Ebony sighed, realising that Bray was finding this very hard to take. "Look, I'm sorry. But people do that all the time, you know, and it can be stopped sometimes. And even if it isn't--"

"People used to do it all the time. It used to be able to be stopped. What now? There's no medicine, no intravenous drip, no muscle relaxants. And there are no incubators either. It's too early. Even if it wasn't, you've no idea what we went through when Trudy had Brady. She was so ill. If it hadn't been for Dal--" He thought about the younger boy, risking everything to get medicine for Trudy, and then thought of him again, lying dead in the road, and he leaned back against the wall. He wasn't sure if he wanted to cry, or just to hit something, but he knew that he wanted to do something. "Dal... Damn it, Ebony, it's all such a bloody mess! Everything's wrong. Everything. I thought it was going to be better. I thought everything could be better. That we could sort it out, and get back to... to something like normal. And now look. Look at it all out there. Dead people filling the streets, all over again. And for what?"

"For Tribe Fury, at a guess." She spoke evenly, quietly, trying not to fuel his anger. "Is that what they told you they're called?"

"Yeah." As she had hoped, his own voice now mostly matched hers; calmer, quieter, though heavy with sadness. "Army cadets, that sort of thing. They've been together a long time now, training while we were slumming it down here in the city. They're like something out of a nightmare, and they have a whole lot of hardware. Guns, grenades, at least one plane. Goodness knows what else. We could well be screwed. All of us."

"Speak for yourself." She frowned up at him, trying to cut through the dangerous defeatism which had threatened to be his undoing more than once in the past. "Look, I'm not the one worrying about a lover and a baby, I know - but I'm not going to give in that easily. We've got all kinds of chances. So what if Tribe Fury are planning to take the city? We can hide from any kind of danger - indefinitely if we have to. You and the rest of your little band proved that hiding in the Mall all those weeks, with the Locos and the Demon Dogs out rounding up Strays. We can do the same now. We'll be safe there until we can be sure of getting out into the hills. Amber will be alright. She's tough."

"Yeah." He nodded mechanically, and tried to convince himself of that. Ebony nodded back, trying to encourage him further.

"And sometimes you just have to accept that there's nothing you can do. For your sake, and the rest of the Mall Rats, you're going to have to stop thinking about her for a while. I mean it Bray. Snap out of it."

"Snap out of it." He couldn't stop his thoughts from lingering on his last view of Amber, lying in that old deserted wooden building, confused and in pain. Still, Ebony did have a point. Amber would be furious if he threw everything away trying to get back to her; if he abandoned the rest of the Mall Rats, or took too many stupid risks. "We should get to the Mall."

"Then let's hurry." She led the way out of the door, into the grimy alley beyond. "Stay alert. We don't know where anybody is, and by the sounds of things, they're getting the upper hand over by the hotel. That might mean they're more likely to see us."

"You won't know it if they do. They'll just shoot the pair of us down." He moved into the lead, calling on all his old instincts, listening out for any footsteps that did not belong to Ebony or himself. "As soon as we hit the mouth of this alley, we're going to have to start running. Keep running. Don't stop until we're at the Mall."

"Right with you."

"See that you are." He looked back at her, eyes deep and dark. "I'd stop for some people, Ebony. I'd go back for others, whatever the risks. Don't count on me doing that for you."

"Sure. It's always nice to know who your friends are."

"You earn your friends." He turned his back on her again. "I don't know yet if you've earned this one."

"I will." For perhaps the first time there was no hint of a double meaning; of any falsehood in her voice. For perhaps the first time she sounded genuinely sincere. "Now let's get going."

"Yeah." Already too tired to want to worry about anything else, he headed for the end of the alley. Before him lay streets filled with potential enemies; streets that were spattered with the blood of his neighbours. Streets that no longer seemed familiar. Somewhere out amongst them was the place that had been his home during some of the hardest times of his life. Time, then, to go back there, for what could be the hardest times yet.

Chapter Text

They had almost reached the Mall when Ebony heard sounds - shouting, screaming, banging. She came to a halt, grabbing Bray's arm and pulling him through the broken door of an old bakery. He glared and pulled free.

"Don't drag me about. I've had enough of that today."

"Oh right. I'll just let the screaming mob find you then, shall I?" She peered out of a glass-less window. "Sounds like quite a crowd."

"People wondering what's happened, or panicking because they know what has." Bray crouched down beside her. "Sounds... angry?"

"Angry and scared. Sounds like a mob going crazy." She ducked sharply. "They're heading this way."

"They'll be going to the hotel. Probably hoping you'll be there to tell them what's going on." He started to stand. "We should warn them."

"Are you nuts?" She pulled him down. "They see you, and things'll only get worse. You're not exactly Mr Popularity out there you know."

"Yeah, and who's fault is that?" He sat down on a wooden crate, that looked like it still held some of the bread that this bakery had once produced. Mould protruded from every crack, green fingers reaching out to the world. Bray didn't seem to notice. "You go out then. It's you they want to see, and you can tell them not to go to the hotel. If they walk into all that they'll be wiped out."

"Not all of them." She stared at the people as they came down the road - a riot of coloured clothes and tribal paint; a wild tumble of crazed hair styles, different designs clashing and complementing each other. The noise was an aural match for the visuals - a rise and fall of clamouring, ringing shouts and plaintive cries. Everybody was demanding an answer to their own most pressing questions, suggesting theories, spreading rumours. Some voices rose above the others, letting the hidden onlookers hear whole sentences in the midst of the bedlam, but it offered no glimpse of a sanity hidden in the storm. There were cries about the return of the adults, about Zoot and the Chosen, about an army sent in by the outside world to bring the many tribes under new control.

"You can't let them walk into a massacre." Bray was still seeing unwanted images of all those bullet-riddled bodies. "Ebony..."

"That's a mob, Bray. They don't want to listen to anybody right now. Anything you can do isn't going to make a difference."

"It might." He stood up suddenly, heading for the door. "They need guidance from their leader - and that's you, in case you'd forgotten."

"You're not going out there?"

"You want me to let them die?" He moved aside before she could grab his arm again. "I guess I'm not as cold as you are."

"I'm not being cold, I'm being practical." She followed him to the door. "Listen to them. They're half crazy."

"They made you their queen, Ebony. Don't you think that you owe--" He broke off, listening to a new sound that was rising above the raucous noise of the crowd. "What's that?"

"You know what it is. Gunfire." She felt genuinely sad, even if she had been trying to appear unconcerned until now. "It must be more of Tribe Fury, coming up from behind."

"They're all over the place."

"It's an invasion, isn't it. They couldn't take over the city with just that bunch at the hotel. Goodness knows how many there are."

"Then what do we do?" He seemed to have lost his momentum, and was standing still, staring at the milling crowd. They were starting to hear the guns themselves now, falling quiet one by one, stopping to listen but shifting with increased restlessness.

"I think it's a little too late to warn them to run." She took his arm again. "Come back inside. We don't have to get caught up in this."

"But we can't--"

"Yes we can." She pulled and he didn't resist, although she still had to fight to move him. He was a dead weight, preoccupied mind making his movements slow. "Whatever is going to happen to those people is already happening. There's nothing we can do."

"They're here!" The cry came from a girl of about fourteen, whose yellow hair clashed insanely with the shocking pink overalls she had chosen to wear. "They're coming for us!"

"Is it Zoot?" asked another.

"They have guns!" That last was at first just a murmur - then others repeated it, shouted it, and with a wretched cry that tore through the massed ranks of the crowd, everybody began to shout it in an off-kilter chorus. Ebony dragged Bray back under cover in the bakery just in time.

They came in pairs - ten or twelve of them in total, possibly more - all in their black uniforms, and all with their guns. The crowd broke apart, everybody running for shelter in a jagged stampede. Tribe Fury split up, neatly blocking the way with their own limited numbers, guns raised. A few people tried to run past, but they were shot down.

"Just stay where you are." Moving into the lead, one of the Furies made a show of putting away his gun. "We don't want to kill you, but we won't allow you to resist us. Is that understood?"

"We're all going to die," babbled somebody. Ebony couldn't see who, although it was hard to see anything when she didn't dare risk being seen herself.

"Nobody need die. Just come with us to the hotel, and move in an orderly fashion."

"They're going to kill us." It was the yellow-haired girl in pink who spoke this time, and the sound of her voice seemed to make the crowd more restless again. They began to move around, those at the edges getting pushed towards the black-clad gunmen around them. There was a shout as somebody in the midst of the crowd fell under the feet of the others. Bray shook his head.

"They're going to get themselves shot. They have to calm down."

"For what? To get herded who knows where, for who knows what reason?"

"Maybe we can distract the Furies. Some of the crowd might get away."

"More likely they'd be shot down, and us along with them. Let it go, Bray." She sat down on the crate he had used earlier. "So much for my reign of glory. I had such hopes for this city."

"Yeah. Slave labour and madness. All the money for you, and most of the food as well. Some of us know the truth about what went on in your corridors of power, don't forget that."

"Always my conscience, right Bray?"

"Not conscience enough, apparently." He turned away from her, looking back towards the crowd. There were about forty of them, he thought, mostly backed up against the towering wall of an old metro supermarket. Some of them were trying to get away by climbing through the big front windows into the building, but they had chosen a series of some of the only windows that weren't yet broken. Coloured glass shouting about low prices every day, and advertising the latest loyalty scheme, barred their way. Somebody tried to break a window with a shoe, and a Fury sent a shot overhead.

"Calm down." The tribe's previous spokesman spoke up again. "There is no need for panic. We are asking for your co-operation, and if you give it nobody else will be hurt. Come with us to the hotel, and everything will be explained to you there."

"Who are you?" Somehow the yellow-haired girl had become the leader of the crowd, although she looked terribly small against some of the others. The leader of the band of Furies marched neatly forwards, and stopped very close to her.

"We are Tribe Fury." He said it as though it should mean something to everyone who heard it. "This is our city now. Do as you're told, and nothing will happen to you."

"What do you want from us?" The young girl seemed isolated, the others drawing back as far as the could, determined to keep her between themselves and the black-clad soldiers.

"Obedience." He drew his gun, reaching out with it, and resting it against her chin. "Who are you?"

"Emmy." She was faltering now, withered by the force of a glare that remained invisible behind dark, mirrored glasses. Her antagonist lowered the gun, although he didn't back away from her.

"Emmy." He nodded. "I'm Kesh. Lieutenant Kesh, and it's my job to get you and your companions - and anybody else we can find - to the hotel. There are other units in other parts of the city, and they're going to be bringing you all in. Once we've got as many of you there as we can, our leader will make an announcement, and I think you'll want to hear that. Especially since it details new rules that you might just be executed for not complying with." He smiled, and the girl shrank even further away. "Come with us, or die here. We've got bullets enough for everybody."

"What's to stop you using them?" Emmy clearly didn't appreciate being the voice of the crowd, and would far rather have been one of the people trying to hide at the back. Kesh smiled, his eyes almost as flirtatious as Racha's had been, though with none of the warmth and the charm.

"You'll just have to take my word, won't you. It's all you're getting. Now come with us, or die."

"Yeah." She lowered her eyes, unwilling to say any more, equally unwilling to disobery him. "Yeah, sure."

"Good." He stepped back, holstering his gun once again. "Then let's move out, shall we?"

"Make us." Finally finding his voice, one of the older boys in the crowd pushed forward, jostled by the other, bigger boys further back. He was taller than Kesh by a good deal, bigger of build and older by some way. Perhaps he hoped to impress the younger boy with his size, although with so many other Furies present it was far from a sensible move. Kesh didn't so much as blink.

"I'd get back if I were you." His voice was pleasant, although his face was not. The older boy sneered.

"Why? Listen, you might have guns, but there are only twelve of you. Maybe if we all--" He broke off at the sound of a gunshot, and looked around to see where the bullet had gone. Perhaps he thought it had been fired overhead, or that somebody nearby had been hit. It was several moments before he noticed the bloodstain on his own, already crimson, shirt. He gaped.

"The lieutenant gave an order." Her gun still faintly smoking, a powerful, heavy-set girl of about fifteen came forward. "Obey it."

"Thank you Lana. There's no need for any unpleasantness." Kesh snapped his fingers, and pointed to the boy who had been shot. Two of the Furies marched smartly forward, catching the boy as he fell, lifting him up as though he weighed nothing. "This one will receive medical attention, if he survives the journey. I'd advise you all to avoid any likelihood of joining him."

"Don't... don't go with them." The boy in the crimson shirt was struggling weakly. "Don't..."

"If they don't they'll all be as dead as you," pointed out Kesh, completely unmoved. "What's it to be? Anybody else want a shot at playing the rebel leader?" There was no answer, and he smiled in satisfaction. "Good. Then let's go. Sharpish."

"Ruthless bastards." Unable to keep the sense of shock from her voice, Ebony watched the crowd leave, their escort keeping the pace up to a smart jog. She didn't think that the jostling would do the wounded boy any good, but clearly nobody cared. Bray nodded.

"We should get back to the Mall. Warn them even if we can't help anybody else."

"Now? Are you kidding? We don't know how many of these people are out there! Stay here for now Bray, and head out later on. You know it makes sense."

"Yeah." He rubbed his eyes, obviously tired. "Yeah. You're right I guess"

"I'm always right." She touched his hand, though only for a second. "Try to get some sleep. We both need it, and there's no telling when we'll next get the chance."

"Sleep? Now?" He shook his head, clearly not believing that he would be able to get any rest after everything that he had just seen. Ebony knew better though. Anybody could sleep, if they were tired enough. It didn't matter what images were echoing around inside their heads. And at the end of the day, even after all that they had been through, she and Bray were still young. Young enough, perhaps, to still traverse the darkest of life's many horrors without too many ill effects.

"We could both do with the rest," she told him. "We can post a guard it it'll make you feel any better, but I don't think it's worth it. With the sort of firepower they've got, we won't get very far once they know where we are."

"They might search all the buildings," he reminded her. "It might be safer just to move on."

"And risk somebody seeing us going into the Mall? No. And besides, they don't have the manpower to make a proper search of the city. They'll recruit from the prisoners they've taken today; go through the city with a proper army to back them up. I should think we'll be safe for a few days, so long as we stay undercover."

"And then?"

"Who knows." She lay down, settling herself on the hard ground. A debris-covered bakery floor was never the best place to try to sleep, but she had known worse places since the death of the adults. "Worry about that later."

"Some of us like to think about the future, Ebony."

"You shouldn't." She smiled, her eyes bright and warm. Flirtatious, he thought. Just like Racha; though potentially even more deadly. "Planning your future is about order. You should search for chaos. Power and chaos. Let the future take care of itself."

"Maybe." But he couldn't; not when the future was his own child, trying to be born too early, on a hillside miles away, when he was powerless to do anything for it. He couldn't help but worry, and think, and try to make plans that right now he couldn't believe he would ever be able to bring to fruition. So it was that he fell at last into a troubled but restful sleep - and didn't wake even when Ebony slid close to him, and laid her head against his shoulder to seek dreams of her own.

They had wandered the streets for half an hour, trying to find somebody who could tell them something about the paratroopers. Lex was becoming agitated, and although he was learning to control his temper, Pride knew the warning signs. They hadn't known each other for a great deal of time, but Pride knew people, and judged them well. Lex wanted to hit somebody. The problem was that he couldn't find anybody to hit.

They couldn't find anybody, period. It had been with a fair certainty of their success that they had set out from the Mall, looking for someone who might have seen one of the parachutes land, or who might have discovered who the new arrivals were, but the streets were deserted. The questioning, panicking crowds that Pride and KC had seen earlier had departed, and everywhere was now quiet. Rubbish blew along the empty roads, the wind whistled through broken panes of glass. Loosely hanging shutters banged without rhythm. Lex almost expected to hear the howl of the Loco's police siren, bringing the peace to a close.

"Where the hell is everybody?" Walking down the middle of the road, he turned in a circle, staring about in every direction. He saw no faces at windows, no people moving in the alleyways. He didn't even hear any sounds in the distance.

"Maybe they've gone to the hotel. Ebony might be making a speech about our visitors." Pride had to smile at that image - Ebony, the great orator, talking to her subjects and easing their fears. Lex shook his head.

"She'd have got somebody going around with loudspeakers blaring, telling us all about it. No, that can't be where they've gone."

"Then they must be hiding, mustn't they." Pride also turned in a circle. "I take it that you were expecting somebody to be out and about at least?"

"Yeah. There's always somebody. Scavengers, touts, you name it. Even when the Chosen were rounding everybody up, there'd still be people taking the chance to go out. They have to. People need to eat, and to make some kind of a living. Either that or they go out just to avoid going stir crazy."

"There aren't any vibes." Pride was practically sniffing the air, trying to use his instincts like the wild animal he modelled himself on. "I can't sense any unease."

"That's because there's nobody to sense it from." Lex slammed his fist into the palm of his hand. "What's going on? Somebody must have spread one hell of a warning about for the streets to have cleared up this quickly."

"Maybe we should have gone straight out, instead of spending most of the day trying to make the Mall secure first?"

"No. No, I don't think so." There was an alternative explanation for the silence, and not one that Lex liked. "Maybe there wasn't a warning. Maybe everybody who was out here got rounded up."

"We'd have heard something, wouldn't we?"

"Maybe we did. Remember all the shouting? You and KC said it was people panicking, thinking that maybe the adults had come back, and maybe that was what it started out as. But maybe it turned into something else - like real panic."

"You think the paratroopers meant business." Pride sighed heavily. "Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. Why do so many people want control of this city? It's not as if it's even an especially nice place to live."

"It could be a lot worse, country boy. As cities go, this one's perfectly attractive." Lex scowled. "We should carry on looking. Find somebody."

"And maybe walk right into a trap. What if you're right, and the streets really have been cleared? What if those paratroopers really were something sinister? We don't know what we might be walking into."

"Scared?"

"No, Lex, not scared. Just cautious. Listen, dozens of people parachute down here, there's widespread panic followed by silence. Streets full of people either whisked away, chased away, or just so damned spooked that they ran away. Does that really say to you that we should go risking who knows what, just to get a few questions answered?"

"Might be something good. Might be that these people are friendly, and that they're handing out supplies."

"Yeah Lex." Pride rolled his eyes. "And maybe they're the adults come back. You know as well as I do that they'll be kids; another tribe, probably flexing its muscles. If there's one thing I've learned about this city, it's that it doesn't attract big, strong and friendly tribes. Just the crazy and power hungry kind."

"Yeah." Lex had to admit to the truth in that. "So what do you want to do? Head for the hotel and see if there's an official word on all of this?"

"What would you do, Lex, if you were an invasion force attacking this city?"

"Find out where the centre of operations was, and--" He frowned. "I guess we shouldn't go to the hotel then."

"If those paratroopers really are after this city - probably even if they're not - the first thing they'll have done is headed there. It won't be safe."

"So I guess we're going back to the Mall then." Lex scowled again, not happy with the situation. "I don't know. I mean, we could be getting completely the wrong end of the stick here. Those people might be perfectly friendly. We could be going back to hide in that stupid place for no reason. The rest of the city has a great time without us, and we look like complete morons when we find out we've been hiding from... from missionaries or something."

"You really believe that those people were missionaries? Or any kind of good guys?" Pride turned in a circle once again, staring about at the depressing sight of the ruined city, with its burnt out buildings, graffiti, and piled up mountains of rotting rubbish. "Trust your instincts, Lex. What do they tell you?"

"Honestly?" Lex couldn't help thinking of all those other times when he had seen the streets deserted. The days of Zoot's reign; of the chaos that had existed before the return of the Virus; of those early days before the Mall Rats had been able to distribute the antidote, and bring some order in the process; the fear and madness of the occupation by the Chosen. Empty streets and silence meant fear, and that was never a good sign. "I think we should go back to the Mall and make sure that everybody's safe. I think something's up."

"I think you're right." Pride clapped him on the shoulder. "What do we tell the others?"

"The truth. They're not the kids they used to be." Lex began to lead the way back towards their fortified home. Despite being the sort who thrived in battle, and had never been entirely certain what place there was for him in a calm and ordered city, he was uneasy now. Uneasy and unhappy. They had defeated the Chosen, brought the tribes together, embarked upon something that should have been great. Now, so soon, it looked as though they were in trouble again. "But they'll want to know what we're going to do next."

"Fight or run?" Pride quickened his step, his own uneasiness growing. He wasn't used to these streets, this city, this silence - but instead to the wild outdoors; the countryside; and tribes that were for the most part largely harmless. All that he knew of the city was his time as a prisoner in the seclusion of an occupied Mall, and the struggle to restore peace after the collapse of the Chosen's regime. It was different now. Oppressive and cold, in a way that his beloved forest home had never been, at least to him. "Depends how highly you rate your city, I suppose. Is it worth staying here and fighting for, if it really has been overtaken again?"

"This city is always worth fighting for." Lex said it automatically, because fighting talk was one of his talents - but even as the words were tumbling out, he knew that they were true. He loved this city. It was the place he had always known, and the place he wanted to stay in. He didn't want to be driven away. Pride nodded.

"I can't say that I feel the same. This place will never be my home."

"Nobody's asking you to stay, nature boy." Lex sped up, feeling oddly annoyed with his companion. "If you want to get out of the city, go ahead. But don't be too quick to leave, just in case any of the others want to go with you. I don't know that Chloe or Trudy are going to want to go through another turf war."

"I'll take them, if I leave." Pride slowed his step. "Lex... It's just that--"

"Hey, you don't have to explain anything to me. You came here because of Amber, and you stuck around longer than you were planning to because you were captured, and there was that whole thing with the Chosen... I understand that. You'd have left long ago if you could have." Lex shrugged. "I guess it seems a shame to split up the team, but you've got places to go."

"I'd like to get back home. The rest of my tribe came to help defeat the Chosen, but they've all gone back now. I don't know why I stayed as long as did, really. Amber maybe... wanting to see that she really was settled with Bray." He smiled ruefully. "But that's over now. Really over, since they've left as well. I just think that it's time for me to go, before I get sucked into some other battle, and wind up staying even longer."

"It's okay." Lex clapped him on the shoulder. "I understand. Let's just get back to the others, and tell them what we've found out, yeah? We'll all have some decisions to make then."

"Yeah." Pride nodded slowly, wondering how many, if any, of the Mall Rats would choose to come with him, out of the city and back to the idyllic rural life he had used to lead. It would be good for all of them, he thought. It would help Chloe to come to terms with all that had happened; help Jack to find peace within himself; help KC to experience the gentle, ordinary life that had never been his. It would be good for Brady, too, although he was sure that Trudy at least wouldn't go with him. Like Lex she was of the city, and there was too much that kept her there. Too many ghosts, too many echoes of the white-blond boy who had had so great an effect upon all their lives.

"I wish the streets weren't so quiet." Lex's restlessness wasn't helped by the silence and stillness of his city. "Feels weird."

"Like somebody came through here and stole everybody when we weren't looking." Pride smiled rather ruefully. "Ever have that dream when you're all alone?"

"Yeah. Years ago." There were things that you dreamt about as a kid that were never supposed to become a part of reality. "This is not good, Pride."

"You can say that again." The voice made them both jump, and they whirled around together. Ebony was standing in the middle of the road, although where she had come from neither could think.

"Ebony." Lex was taken aback, and angry that he had let others see him when he was so shocked. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Making you jump by the look of things." She was smiling, the way that she so often was - one part humour to at least two parts mild mockery. "What are you two doing out on the streets? Don't you know it's not safe?"

"We were starting to guess, yeah. We haven't seen a living soul." Lex glanced back at Pride. "Maybe we should have gone to the hotel after all."

"If you had you'd be dead by now. That or a prisoner." Ebony shook her head slowly. "You really don't know anything, do you. Where have you been all day, Lex? Outer space?"

"In the Mall, trying to reinforce its defences. We don't know what's coming. Don't know what's already here." He looked around again, scanning the streets. "You alone?"

"Not entirely. Bray's with me." She smiled in gentle delight at his surprise. "He's checking through some of the buildings, trying to be noble. I think he's hoping to find some people he can rescue."

"Just looking for food." Bray came out of an alley nearby, smiling half-heartedly at Lex and Pride. "Some of us haven't eaten in a while."

"Yeah, well if you will get yourself exiled, and then captured by an invading army, you've only got yourself to blame." She was, as ever, unrepentant. "Did you find any cowering children, desperate to be saved?"

"I wasn't looking." He sounded sour, as though he had had enough of her company for the time being. "There's nobody left around here. It's like a ghost town."

"Yeah, we'd noticed." Eager for answers, Lex turned to him in excitement. "So what's going on? What's this about an invading army? Where did the two of you--"

"Go easy, Lex." Pride could see that Bray was in no mood to be interrogated. "We should get back."

"I'd recommend it. You don't know who's out in these streets." Ebony seemed jumpy all of a sudden, disturbed by the inactivity; by the waiting around in too exposed an area. "Come on. At least then we'll only have to tell the story once."

"What story?" Lex was hopping mad. "Just tell us what's going on! The streets are empty, everybody's disappeared, Bray's back. Say, where's Amber?"

"Rather what I was thinking." Pride's concern was too great to allow him to be sensitive to the pain that Bray couldn't hide. "Where is she?"

"Out of the city. Somewhere. Probably safe." Bray was as restless and twitchy as Ebony. "Come on. Lets just get out of the street, okay? Ebony's right, we shouldn't be hanging around out here."

"Yeah, but you won't tell us why." Lex saw that they were determined, and sighed. "Okay, we'll head back to the Mall. But where exactly did the pair of you spring from?"

"We were hiding out a little way north of here," supplied Ebony. "When everything seemed to be quiet we started out for the Mall, going by the side streets. Bray thought he heard your voices, but I told him he was imagining things. I didn't think anybody was crazy enough to be out and about." She smiled. "Then Bray reminded me who we were talking about, and I agreed it might be worth taking a look."

"Funny." Lex walked on ahead, apparently sulking, and with an exasperated look at Ebony, Bray went to join him. He fell into step beside the other boy, and flashed him a rather weak smile.

"Don't let her get to you, Lex."

"You think she does? After everything we'll all been through together, I think I've learnt how to handle her."

"Yeah, I suppose." They walked on a bit further, Bray starting to feel rather awkward. "Listen, Lex... I don't mind having to explain things twice, you know. Just because Ebony said--"

"Bray, don't sweat it, okay? It makes sense to tell us all together, and it's hardly a long walk from here, is it." He looked over at his companion, frowning slightly. "But it's bad, isn't it. Even Ebony seems a little freaked."

"It's bad. Maybe the worst. The Chosen... well they were tough, but this lot... Is everybody at the Mall? I mean, there's nobody missing, is there? I don't like to think what might happen if they were out in the streets earlier today."

"Nobody's missing. Exactly. I mean, Salene's not back yet, and Patsy and Ryan still haven't turned up, but Chloe's still watching out for them all. Alice and Ellie have gone back to their farm, and they've taken the two little kids with them. Four less people to worry about I suppose." He frowned suddenly. "May. I haven't see her. Where could she have gone?"

"Who knows." Bray rubbed a dirty hand across his face, irrevocably smearing the last of the tribal paint there. "How about KC? And Jack?"

"KC's fine. Restless, but I think he'll stay put. I told him to look after the place, and he seemed to like that. Jack's okay too. He's not going anywhere. Not in any mood to go taking risks just now I don't think. He seems a little... I don't know. Vague."

"Good. We don't need any heroes." Bray toyed with the meagre stores he had found. It had always been his job to find food for everybody, and he had enjoyed it in the days when their occupancy of the Mall had been relatively new. He fell silent, wandering along without real purpose in his stride, then looked up sharply.

"Did you hear that?"

"You're pretty jumpy, aren't you."

"I don't plan on getting myself shot, Lex. Not when I have a pregnant girlfriend to get back to."

"Shot?" Lex came to an abrupt halt. "There are guns?" As if in answer a single shot ran out, and he whistled softly. "There are guns."

"Come on." Ebony broke into a run, taking the lead now, and heading for the back entrance to the Mall. She heaved off the manhole cover, jumping inside. Pride followed her, calling to her to mind the newly re-organised alarms.

"What the hell is going on?" Pausing before climbing down into the sewer, Lex looked up at his old sparring partner, eyes sparking with that same intense gleam of confrontation that he had turned upon Bray so often in the past. The other boy glanced back over his shoulder, towards the sounds of gunfire.

"Not now Lex!"

"But those are guns!"

"Yeah. Lots of them, and being waved about by people who know how to use them. So get down that ladder, alright?"

"Alright, alright." Lex slid down out of sight, and Bray followed quickly, dragging the cover back into its place. In the familiar dark of the drain he felt safe, momentarily, until another gunshot rang out somewhere above him. It galvanised him into action, and he followed on as Pride led the way past the alarms, towards the ladder that would take them up into the Mall. Home, thought Bray, somewhat unwillingly. Why did it always feel so weirdly good to be back?

"Pride." KC, standing guard by the entrance to the drains, jumped in surprise at the sudden appearance of the older boy. "Aren't the alarms working?"

"I should think so. I was trying to avoid setting them off." He offered Ebony a hand out of the manhole, and smiled slightly at her affronted expression. "Get everybody together, KC."

"Sure." KC stared hard at Ebony, and opened his mouth to ask a question. Pride glared.

"Now, KC."

"Yeah, yeah. Man, I heard you the first time." The boy went off to do his bidding, through with an exaggerated lack of his usual speed. Ebony stared after him.

"Zoot's Oracle. Still an annoying little pain in the butt."

"Yeah, well he's a useful little pain in the butt." Lex pushed her out of the way so that he could also exit from the sewer. "If it wasn't for him we'd probably still be hiding from the Chosen, instead of whoever that is back there."

"I'd rather it was the Chosen." Climbing up awkwardly with his arms still full of stores, Bray looked around at the building that had been his home for the past year. "This place never gets any better, does it."

"Don't knock it. It's keeping us off the streets." Lex headed off into the middle of the large front hall, taking up a position beside the long-dry fountain. The others were appearing, one by one, coming down the stairs in a shower of questions. Tai-San hurried to Lex, relieved that he was back, and at the sight of Bray Chloe also sped up, delighted by his return.

"Bray!" The relief in her voice was enchanting, and for a second she was once again the child she was still supposed to be. "You're home!"

"Hey Chloe." He set the stores down in order to give her a brief hug. "Yeah, I'm home."

"But where's Amber?" She looked around expectantly, searching for the girl who had been as much a mother to her as Salene; and whom she had been missing just as much. Bray shook his head, and Chloe's face fell.

"Oh." She turned away, trying to hide her disappointment that another member of her family was still absent. "Is she coming soon?"

"I don't know. I sure hope so." He let her lead him towards the fountain, exchanging a nod of greeting with Jack as he emerged from the direction of his workshop.

"Bray." Her own greeting measured and even, Trudy made a slow descent from the upper floor, carrying Brady as always. Bray smiled rather awkwardly at her. Their relationship had been a trifle strained since her brainwashing at the hands of the Chosen, and even though she had long been returned to her true mind, he knew that she still felt bad about some of the things she had been compelled to do. He went to meet her, taking Brady with a fluttering of sadness for his own child. Trudy saw the expression in his eyes, knowing him so much better than did the others.

"Where is Amber?" she asked him. He smiled awkwardly.

"I don't know. All I know is that she's ill. In trouble. Everybody's in trouble."

"You can say that again." Standing on the wall of the fountain, Ebony cast an imperious look around at the others, still apparently eager to play at her new rôle of queen. "Alright, here's the way things are. You know about the aeroplane? The parachutes?"

"Yeah." KC seemed enthusiastic, as though he was hoping that there might be a chance to get a ride on a plane if he met the right person. "Everybody was saying it was adults. There was panicking going on everywhere."

"Yeah, well it wasn't adults." Ebony paused for effect, showing her talent for theatrics. "They're called Tribe Fury, and they're an army. A real army. They've shot up half the city, rounded everybody up, and killed who knows how many people. They've got guns, grenades, probably other things as well."

"They were well fed," added Bray, "and they said they had medics, so they've probably got medicine as well as food. They're really well organised."

"We don't know how many there are," continued Ebony, "but they want the city, and they're well on their way to getting it. They were taking everybody they could find to the hotel, for some kind of briefing. Or maybe just a massacre."

"Not a massacre." Seeing the look on Chloe's face, Bray quickly interceded. "They want people alive, for some reason."

"They didn't want you alive," Ebony reminded him, and for that he had no answer.

"Guns, grenades, an army?" Trudy sat down, looking pale and drawn. "Another tribe trying to take over just like the Locos, and the Demon Dogs, and the Chosen. Why can't they just leave us alone?"

"We're not going to know that until we know what these people are after." Lex started to pace. "Anybody know how many paratroopers a plane like that could hold?"

"Military aircraft was never one of my specialities," Bray told him, sarcasm heavy in his voice. "Can't be that many surely. Or that few."

"Does it matter how many of them there are when they've got guns?" Trudy took Brady back, hugging her close. "We have to... to do something."

"Well that's helpful," snapped Ebony. "Like to tell us what exactly it is that we should do?"

"Stopping the arguments would be a good start." Tai-San stood pointedly between the two girls, preventing them from glaring at each other. "Bray, are you sure that this is as serious as it sounds?"

"Yeah." He thought back to his brief time as a prisoner of Tribe Fury, remembering their professionalism; the cold way that they had prepared to execute him, just because he had no further use save as a demonstration to onlookers. He thought about all the others, dead or wounded, and lying in the street; the clamouring crowds and the subdued group he had seen being taken away. The boy in the crimson shirt. "Yeah, it's serious. More than serious. I don't see how we can go up against people like this. All those weapons... and they've got no worries about using them. I've seen them using them."

"Then we should cut our losses and leave." Pride's thoughts were back with his earlier resolution. "Get out of the city. There are plenty of other places we can go."

"Until this tribe recruits all the people in the city who'd rather join them than be killed by them - and then they'll start taking over other places as well." Trudy shook her head. "We can't leave. We can't let them take the city."

"Are you bullet proof, Trudy? Because if you're not you haven't got a hope in hell of fighting these people." Ebony laughed unpleasantly. "Maybe you're still believing all that rubbish that the Guardian used to say about you. Is the Supreme Mother as immortal as Zoot is supposed to be?"

"Leave Zoot out of this." Bray was looking uncomfortable. "Trude, I see your point, but I don't know that we have any choice. Tribe Fury brought me here, and made me leave Amber behind, out there somewhere. I have to get back to her."

"Chances are they're bringing her to the city." Jack sat down on the fountain wall, resting his face in his hands. "I really don't need this. Another crazy army?"

"This one isn't likely to send us away to prison farms," Chloe told him, sounding rather cold at first. "Just shoot us, apparently."

"It's not necessarily as bad as that." Bray tried to make her feel better, although his own unhappiness didn't give his words much resonance. Chloe gave him a horribly adult stare, and sat down beside Jack.

"We need to find out how bad it is, don't we," she said. KC nodded.

"Yeah. Like an undercover mission or something. We could sneak into the hotel and pretend to be soldiers."

"Shut up," Ebony told him, never one to display much patience with those younger than herself. Jack looked up.

"No, he's got a point. So's Chloe. We do need to find out a few things. What they're after, why they want the city, whether or not they're really likely to kill us all. I'm not saying we should try sneaking into the hotel, but we ought to try going along there."

"They said there was going to be some kind of announcement," offered Bray. "There was a bunch of them rounding people up in the street. They said that when they thought they'd got as many people as they were likely to, there'd be an announcement from their leader, about rules and stuff."

"Then we want to hear that, don't we." Lex nodded, glad that things had reached a point where he could once again play a part. "Once we've heard what's going on, we can make plans. We've made this place pretty secure, so we should be safe enough. Bray's always been good at finding food in war zones, so we shouldn't go hungry. Jack can get the water filter running again, and the battery charger too. The Chosen tore them down, but the stuff's still all up on the roof. We'll be safe in here as long as we need to be. Then we can make real plans. Long term plans." He nodded, pleased that he had come up with a reasonable strategy. "For what it's worth, I think Trudy's right, and we at least ought to try to fight back. We've done some pretty amazing things in the past. Beating some new tribe can't be harder than beating the Virus."

"I don't know how safe we are here." Bray was standing still, though in his mind he was pacing as restlessly as ever he had done. "I told them I lived in a Mall. They said they were going to look for it."

"Huh?" This was news even to Ebony, and she gazed at him now, as did everybody else. "You did what?"

"They asked what tribe I was with. They were trying to get to me." He rubbed his wrists, where red marks still showed from the handcuffs. "I wasn't thinking."

"Sounds like it." Lex let out a long sigh. "Alright. Well there's more than one mall in this city. Even if they were serious about coming after us, they're not going to know this is the right place, are they. We'll fix the place up. Make it look derelict. It'll be good protection, just in case they do recruit some locals. There are plenty of them that know which mall to look in."

"That's not a bad plan. Suggest one truth to hide another." Tai-San nodded her approval. "But I don't like this idea of going to the hotel. It's not safe."

"Well we couldn't all go. That really would be dangerous." Lex looked around at the others. It had been Jack's idea, and by rights he should be offered the chance to put it into action; but he was hardly the right person to choose. KC would gladly go, but Lex was not willing to send the boy do to such a job. He was still too young, too frivolous. "Bray and me'll go. Right Bray?"

"Yeah." Bray nodded, glad that he would have something to do. Chloe looked sour.

"And me," she announced. Lex shook his head.

"Not likely."

"Why not? I sort of suggested it first. And don't tell me that I'm too young, because I'm not. Even KC isn't all that little anymore."

"Hey!" KC, unsurprisingly, took exception to the 'even'. Trudy smiled.

"You're not going, Chloe," she said with authority. "I need you to help with Brady. Besides, we'll all be busy making the place look like nobody lives here. The fewer people that go, the better."

"Okay." The younger girl still didn't look happy, but she was sensible enough to be ready to be useful where she could.

"I'm coming as well," announced Ebony. Lex wasn't surprised.

" Fine," he told her. "But this is a security matter, which puts me in charge. Don't go trying to follow your own agenda in all of this."

"As if I would." She fluttered her lashes at him, then turned to Pride. "There's a lot of junk outside the fire escape beside the old craft store. Every kind of rubbish. Spread it around in the right way, and it'll make this place look nice and abandoned. You should probably block the tunnels in the sewers too, and try to do something about the front entrance. Hell, cave in the lobby or something. We don't how long we might have to hide out in here."

"There are only five of us," pointed out Pride. She shrugged.

"So? There's a bloody sight more of them, and you don't want them finding you here. Do what you have to do."

"I think we can block the tunnels okay." Jack's mind was already working on the problem. "The lobby will be harder, but I can probably come up with something. We'll need at least two new entrances though. It's always a good idea to have a back door."

"You'll think of something." The prospect of action was making Bray feel better than he felt since his capture; since even before then, when he and Amber had been driven out of the city. He was almost eager for the off. Of all of them only Tai-San and Trudy looked unhappy.

"We should go. We don't have any idea when this announcement is being made, and we don't want to miss it." Ebony started off for the sewers, not bothering to make any goodbyes. She didn't really have anybody to say good bye to. Tai-San squeezed Lex's arm.

"Are you sure about this? You've only just got back. It's not as if your luck is endless."

"Tai-San, I'll be fine." He kissed her gently, then nodded around at the others. "Keep your heads down, and get started on the camouflage. KC, the new exits are your responsibility. You're the sneakiest guy we've got."

"Sure Lex." The boy nodded his green-haired head in determined confirmation. "I'll sort it."

"I know you will." With one last, fond smile at Tai-San, he followed Ebony away. Only Bray remained.

"I... guess I'll be going," he said, rather awkwardly. It hurt that Amber wasn't here, to bid farewell to in the way that Lex had taken leave of Tai-San.

"Take care." Trudy held up Brady, as though to allow the baby to wish her uncle a safe journey. She looked so small in her mother's arms; proof by her size that, despite all that had happened, it really was only a year since they had all come together in this place, and Trudy had given birth.

"Yeah. Good luck." Jack offered a well meaning, if typically distracted, smile. Bray nodded.

"And you. No risks. Don't make more noise than you have to. We'll try to be back by morning, give you an update."

"Keep an eye out for Amber," Pride told him. "Just in case she's been brought into the city." Bray nodded.

"I will. I doubt she's been moved yet. She wasn't in great shape, but... yeah. I'll keep a look out." He raised a hand, taking his leave of them for the second time that day, though in radically different circumstances to before. "See you soon." He hurried away. Chloe stared after him.

"They'll be alright, won't they?" she asked. Tai-San put an arm around her shoulders.

"We'll send them strength," she said, in the same voice she had been using to reassure Chloe since the day they had first met. "But it must be as we work, not in the circle we usually form."

"Gee, no holding hands. I'm gutted." Jack stood up, mind working over the many possible plans. "Come on. We'd better get moving. Pride, find all the heavy things you can. Chloe, all the tools, especially sharp ones. Raid the gardening store. There's lot of stuff there that escaped the lootings. I guess most of the tribes aren't into gardening. KC, Tai-San, collect all the rubbish you can from outside, but don't take any risks. There's a lot there that we dumped when we were tidying this place up, so you won't have to go far."

"Do you actually have a plan?" asked Trudy. He smiled, though not with all of his usual confidence.

"Yes... sort of. It's a start, anyway."

"Wonderful. So what do you want me to do?"

"Get together all the soft furnishings that we don't need. Blankets, rugs, anything like that. Bring them down here." He grinned, cheerful if not entirely certain of success. "Yeah, I think this is going to work."

"I hope so. I don't want to end up being captured by these Tribe Fury people." Chloe, who had never liked guns even just on the television, set off on her appointed errand, Pride at her heels. Jack glared at them, as though they were somehow insulting him by seeming less than confident.

"Nobody's going to be captured by Tribe Fury," he muttered; then thought of Bray, Ebony and Lex. "Well, except maybe--"

"You're right, Jack. Nobody is going to be captured by Tribe Fury." Interrupting him before he could depress any of them even more, Trudy tried to turn her own thoughts away from the others. Lex... Ebony... and Bray. Especially Bray. Somehow it always came back to him. Maybe she was still in love - either with him or with his brother. Maybe she couldn't let go. Maybe, if he came back, she would finally try to address all of that, and sort if out once and for all.

Or, rather more likely, she would not.

Chapter Text

It should not have been an especially long walk to the hotel; the route was a direct one, and it was no great distance. The threesome were taking no risks, however, and it was only after much care, and frequent dives undercover at imagined dangers, that they eventually reached their destination. Lex immediately tried to take charge, but Ebony, as usual, was oblivious to anybody's authority but her own. Bray didn't care much for Lex's aspirations of leadership, either, and never had.

"I'm head of security," hissed Lex, as they hunted for some place from which they could watch the proceedings. "I'm supposed to stop the rest of you from getting killed."

"Take it easy, Lex." Bray led the way along a tiny street filled with the almost unbearable stench of putrefying trash. "Nobody's looking."

It was true. Although the space outside the hotel, and all the main thoroughfares around it, were packed with people, nobody was interested in the three late arrivals. Tribe Fury was present, but as guards only, patrolling the edges of the crowd, and standing on some of the buildings. Bray kept an eye out for Racha or any of his unit, not anxious to be recognised; but beyond that small threat they seemed safe enough. Ebony found them a good place to stand in amongst the shadows, from where with luck they could slip away quickly, and not be herded off somewhere once the announcement had been made. They were assuming it had not yet taken place, for there was an air of expectation about the crowd. They were waiting for something - for someone. Waiting for a glimpse of whoever was the leader of all of this. The person who had guided Tribe Fury to take over the city.

"This is... impressive." Lex had been intending to show how appalled he was by this latest belligerent tribe, but his grudging respect wouldn't be held back. It was impressive. Very much so. The whole execution of the invasion, the use of parachutes, the obvious efficiency on display - it was the kind of thing he had been looking for himself, when he had first left the military training camp in the hills, and returned to the city. When he had seen the need for strength in the vacuum left by the dying adults. He had changed since then of course, and would no longer jump at the chance of being a part of such an operation - but he couldn't help marvelling at it all the same.

"I'm glad you approve." Ebony was faintly amused. "I'll bet all the people who died here today aren't."

"I wonder what happened to the Mozzies?" pondered Bray. He owed them no fondness, and certainly felt none - but it was never nice to think of death; especially violent death.

"Knowing them they're probably already working for whoever's in charge." Ebony looked about, a little worried that one of the crowd might recognise her. All that it would take was for one person to call her name, and soon everybody would know that she was here. She wasn't sure that she liked the idea of that, since Tribe Fury would no doubt rather she were dead. "Those girls take care of themselves well."

"They learnt from you," muttered Lex. Ebony smiled sweetly, then pointedly turned to Bray, neatly cutting her former sheriff out of the conversation.

"When do you think it'll start?"

"You heard as much as I did. When they think pretty much everybody is here, I suppose." He scanned the nearby roofs, the figures patrolling there, the many sentries on the streets. "Any time now, I'd say. There's a lot of them here."

"A hell of a lot. We're going to have a job getting away from here." Lex didn't like the look of the figures walking slowly back and forth on the roofs, all carrying rifles, and all, apparently, wearing head sets. They were in constant communication with each other, then, which could only add to their efficiency. His blood would have run cold, he was sure, if it was not already as cold as could be.

"We'll get away when the time comes." Ebony was staring at the hotel, or more particularly at the person she could see striding out onto the roof of the lobby. "Look. It must be show-time."

"He must have a hell of a loud voice if he think he can talk to everybody from up there," commented Lex - but of course Tribe Fury had already taken care of that. When the noise of the lone figure clearing his throat thundered out of a collection of well-positioned speakers, it was clear that there was going to be no problem hearing his words.

"Friends." He spoke with warmth, but also with authority; a strong voice that suggested it didn't like to be argued with. "Thank you for coming here today."

"Yeah, 'cause you gave them a choice," muttered Lex. The voice continued, booming out of the unseen speakers with an easy resonance.

"I am Silver, and we are Tribe Fury. This city is ours. You don't need to ask us why, or what we intend to do with it now that we have it. Those things aren't important. Just know that it is ours - and so is everybody in it."

"Like hell," growled Ebony. Both her companions had to smile.

"And so, now that you, your homes, your streets - all that you see before you - belongs to us, perhaps you'd like you know how we intend to govern?" Humour tinged the voice. An unpleasant, mocking humour that still didn't quite lose the voice its warmth. "You've seen our strength; our resilience; our weaponry. The streets are already full of your dead, one of our new buildings is already full of your wounded. I'd advise you all not to try to join either group. The dead face an ignominious disposal, and the wounded take their chances at the hands of our medics. They do their best, but -" a small laugh - "they're only children."

"Hey, man - Amber will be fine." Lex's words came in answer to the flicker of anger on Bray's face, but Bray barely reacted. He was thinking pleasant thoughts of wiping the audible smile from that faraway face.

"There will be changes, and they will be immediate. Firstly, a curfew, between sunset and sunrise. Anybody found outside during the curfew will be arrested and imprisoned. Secondly, the work detail. All those above the age of ten are eligible for military training. Those who pass may eventually be inducted into the ranks of Tribe Fury. There will be extra rations for all such volunteers, and you will have no further need to worry about your illnesses and ailments. Our medics may not be expert surgeons, but they have experience and medicine enough to deal with all those complaints that have become such a concern since the adults died. Childbirth, infectious diseases. How many died that first winter from fevers, from meningitis? Joins us and you'll be taken care of."

"Very persuasive," Lex muttered, already hearing murmurs of interest from the crowd. Bray nodded.

"He knows how to press the right buttons," he whispered back. "Food, medicine, security - he's already got most people's major concerns sewn up."

"Except for freedom," shot back Ebony. Lex shook his head.

"This lot are too scared to worry about that right now. Don't you think?"

"Probably." She turned back to stare up at the distant figure of Silver, standing silently whilst he waited for his words to sink in. "I wish we could see him. I like to see a person's face when they talk to me; especially if they're laying down the law."

"Kid over there's got a telescope." Bray had spotted a gleam of brass, and tried to edge a little nearer. He froze though, temporarily, when Silver began to speak again.

"Those who choose not to train are eligible for the work details. You'll collect food, help to grow food, clear out and repair damaged buildings in the area around this hotel. This is to be our headquarters, and we want the buildings around it as well. They're to be our barracks, our prisons, our medical centres, our schools. Yes, our schools. All children above the age of ten can train or work with us - all children below the age of ten will report here for schooling. And you will come. There will be penalties for those who do not attend."

"Nice way to try brainwashing the masses." Lex was not impressed. Neither was Ebony, although she was rather absorbed in watching Bray's progress towards the boy with the telescope, and wasn't paying much attention to Lex's sarcasm.

"You may keep your individual tribes, until - and if - you are allowed to join us. You may keep your individual tribal leaders. Just remember that all are now answerable to us. We rule. If you think that you can fight us; if you think that you're stronger than our guns, you can try to fight back - but I don't advise it. You won't win. Don't try to leave the city. You won't make it. Nobody else will be able to enter the city. They will be stopped."

"Pretty damn sure of yourselves, aren't you." Lex couldn't help his pithy responses to Silver's words. Nobody could hear them, so there was little point to them - but it made him feel better to try making at least a kind of rebellion. Nearby Bray made a grab for the boy with the telescope, and in a silent, hurried scuffle, got it away. The boy didn't object too much - either because he was already too afraid, or because he was too small to want to try fighting against somebody of Bray's size. Feeling wretched for his thievery, Bray returned to the others, and handed the telescope straight to Ebony.

"Thank you." He might be feeling too guilty to want to use it, but she wasn't bothered by such scruples. "Did anybody see you?"

"I don't think so. Nobody that mattered, anyway." He drew back into the shadows with the others, and they settled back to hear the rest of the speech.

"I said that there would be rules, and there will be. Tribe Fury brings order and law. There will be no more looting. There will be no more fighting. There will be no more alcohol. All tribes will receive a food allowance. One designated member of each tribe will report here daily to receive that allotment. There will therefore be a register. If you want to be fed, you must be registered. Your name, your age, your tribe. If you have no tribe you will be co-opted into our training programme, for your own safety. If one of you breaks a law, your whole tribe will suffer the consequences. Food rations will be docked. Water may be withheld. Obey all laws for your own well-being.

"If a member of Tribe Fury is attacked, random civilians may be executed in retaliation. Certainly there will be repercussions. Food will be withheld until a culprit is found. If a member of Tribe Fury is killed, ten random civilians will be executed in retaliation. Food will also be withheld until a culprit is found."

"A culprit, not the culprit." Bray shook his head. "Some law."

"It may be a lousy law, but he's enjoying himself announcing it." Ebony was staring through the telescope, watching the mocking, amused face of the boy on the roof. He was about eighteen, with an athletic frame and impressive stature. His black uniform flattered him, matching his skin colour almost perfectly, and contrasting nicely with the gleaming silver of his hair. He wore the three blue stripes on his face like the others, but also wore a matching set across the front of his uniform, along with a pair of silver epaulettes that increased the breadth of his shoulders. A splendid figure, Ebony couldn't deny - and a handsome one. The smile was pleasant even if it was mocking; the eyes were bright and intelligent. She sighed. What a shame he had to be so definite an enemy. Order and law indeed. Ebony would always remain true to Zoot's love of power and chaos.

"You may be thinking that these are big claims. Big laws. That we're speaking empty words. Well we're not. You've seen our guns, and you know that we can use them. We already have most of you in our power, and once they discover that registration is necessary in order to get food, we'll have the rest of them as well. Once they see us patrolling the streets with their guns, once we raid their homes to check for weapons, for rebels, for forbidden items, they'll see that they can't hold out against us. When they see our might, they'll quail."

"Not sodding likely." Even so, Lex couldn't sound quite as certain as he would have liked. Silver was speaking with an understandable confidence. Nobody in the large audience was showing any sign of arguing, either with Silver or with his many guards.

"Shut up, Lex." Lowering the telescope to glare at her companion, Ebony darted a glance around at the people closest to them. "Somebody's going to hear you."

"Let them." It was a sulky comeback, but Lex was not fool enough to mean it. "I just can't believe nobody is even heckling this jerk."

"Probably because they don't want to get shot." Bray frowned suddenly, listening to something that was rising above the faint murmur of crowds-people discussing all that they had just been told. "Is that the aeroplane coming back? I think I hear something. An engine?"

"Two engines, I'd say. It doesn't sound like an aeroplane though." Lex tried to listen, but up on the lobby roof Silver was speaking again.

"You might think that you can stand against us. Don't. Anybody who tries will be dealt with. Anybody who helps those who stand against us will also be dealt with. Anybody who knows anything. Who sees anything. Anybody who knows the whereabouts of your former leader, Ebony, and all those known to be her associates - all must come forward, or there will be repercussions; for you and for your tribes. We have the manpower. We have the firepower. The city is ours." He paused, briefly, for effect. "Never forget that."

"Great." Ebony retracted the telescope and put it into her pocket. "So now I'm on the most wanted list. If anybody sees us..."

"Sod being seen. We've got to get away from here, seen or otherwise." Lex didn't like the rising volume of the mysterious engines. It suggested that something was coming. Something that was intended to reinforce Silver's speech about strength and power. "We have to get away before this registration starts. If we get caught up in that we haven't got a hope."

"Yeah. 'Cause we've got so much hope anyway." Ebony also stopped to listen to the engines. There was a rumbling too now; a clanking and a juddering, and a sensation of vibrating earth. "What the hell is that?"

"You might doubt us," Silver was saying, although less of the people were listening to him now. Everybody was turning to look in the direction of the oncoming noise. Bray, Ebony and Lex ducked down as best they could, desperate not to be seen by anybody, and finding it increasingly hard. "You might still harbour some hope of getting away, of overpowering us, or maybe chasing us from the city one day. Well forget it. We're not going anywhere, and you cannot defeat us." His faintly mocking smile became a broad grin, sparkling and bright, though there was nobody left to see it. Every pair of eyes was now staring down the road, waiting to see what was coming. The engines grew louder. Over the speakers a faint chuckle brought Silver's amusement to everybody's ears.

And then, with a roar of power that drowned out the first whisper of panic, the approaching vehicles at last came into view. Crashing through a dilapidated fence that made the thoroughfare too narrow, rolling easily over a low wall, they came. Tanks. They were monsters; great metal beasts that made the ground shake, and the glass in the nearby buildings tremble. The caterpillar tracks crushed the windblown litter, the guns turned and turned about; eyes watching the crowd. Eyes that seemed to the three would-be rebels to be searching for opposition. Onwards and onwards they came, scattering the crowd, knocking aside the cover that had allowed Bray and his companions to reach the gathering. And still on they came. On and on until nobody was left in their path save the three who couldn't risk being seen; couldn't risk bolting for better cover. Only when it seemed to the threesome that they were about to be crushed did the tanks at last stop, their eye-like guns swivelling about to survey the whole crowd, and coming to rest, almost as though with purpose, to point at the unseen dissenters. Ebony realised that she was holding her breath, but wasn't sure that she dared release it.

"You see?" Silver's triumph was absolute, but few still had ears for his speechmaking. "You see our power? We are invincible. There is no escape from Tribe Fury. There will be no resistance!" Up on the roofs his people were cheering, waving their rifles in the air, whilst the two tanks stood, silent and immovable; terrifyingly symbolic. Bray felt his stomach sink into his shoes.

"This doesn't look good, guys," he whispered, throat unexpectedly dry. Lex nodded slowly.

"Yeah." He felt even more hopeless than the other two looked, and he knew that his shoulders were slumped in dejection. All his fine hopes of standing up to Tribe Fury; of finding a way to fight them and purge them from the city, danced now in his mind. They were mocking him, belittling him in just the same way as the two tanks. There couldn't really be any way they could fight this - could there? He shook his head in answer to his own unspoken question, and slumped back against the nearby wall. "That guy Silver might just be right."

"Giving up, Lex?" Ebony wanted to sound tough, but even she couldn't quite manage it. Lex didn't look at her.

"Giving? I think it's already given. Face it guys." He stared up at the guns of the tanks, so eerily pointed straight at them. "This could be it."

Chapter Text

It was a bedraggled threesome that eventually found their way back to the Mall. Under cover of the chaos caused by the tanks it had been easy enough to slip away from the meeting, although they had expected all the time to hear the somebody open fire. It had been a surreal experience, looking up into the sightless, staring eyes of the tanks; and it seemed incredible that they had not actually been seen by the people inside. Nobody had called after them, though, when they had edged their way out of their dark hiding place, and the staring guns had not turned to follow their progress. They slipped away together, moving in a strange sort of trance, then finally broke into a run.

And so they returned to the Mall, with a horrible tale to tell. The new rules imposed upon the city by Tribe Fury were enough to make even Lex's confidence fail, and the usually cocksure Ebony was silent and morose. For himself Bray didn't know how he felt. All the freedoms that they had won for themselves were gone in a few short hours, their food supply was in the hands of the enemy, and they had just been told that they had no choice but to join with Tribe Fury as volunteers, as workers, as trainees. It seemed hopeless, and he was struck with a desire to make a break for it; to avoid something that he could never agree to by simply running away. The responsibility that came with membership of a tribe dragged at him now the way that it had not done since the early days. His mind was troubled indeed.

"How do we get in?" Lex's voice sounded heavy and dull. Ebony stared at him.

"Huh?"

"We told the others to block off the entrances - make the place look abandoned. How do we get in?"

"A window." Bray led them to the nearest one, high up in the wall. There was just enough junk piled up in the street to let him climb up, and he broke the window with some of it. "It'll be easy enough to get in here. Not too much of a squeeze."

"Just so long as a broken window isn't too much invitation for somebody else to come in." Lex followed him up, struggling through the small window. "You know, we're going to have to be pretty serious about making this place look empty. If they find us in here..."

"Yeah. I know." Bray turned to watch Ebony jump lightly down to join them. "If they find us, and we're not registered on their little work programme, there'll be hell to pay. I can see us all being shipped off to some forced labour camp somewhere."

"Nobody's forcing me to do labour." Ebony pushed past him. "Come on. Let's see how the kiddies are doing. We can pass the good news along and make them feel as bad as the rest of us."

"Go easy, Ebony. There's no reason to be too blunt." Bray was talking to her departing back, and he knew that she wasn't really listening to him. He sighed. "Fine. Go and blurt it all out. Widespread panic is always helpful." She didn't respond. Lex didn't seem worried by her attitude.

"Let her tell them," he said, with a trace of something unpleasant in his tone. "Like she said, they might as well be feeling as bad as we are."

"Yeah, sure Lex. That's a grown up attitude to take."

"There's no point in mollycoddling anybody. We're all in this together, and they might as well know what it is that they're in the middle of." Lex set off after Ebony. "Come on. They might not believe her without us there to back the story up. Not given anybody much reason to trust her recently, has she."

"Not exactly." Not looking very happy, but apparently mollified to some extent, Bray accompanied the other boy towards the Mall's large lobby. Trudy was there, playing distractedly with Brady, and watching Ebony try to summon the others.

"Bray, Lex." She looked worried, which was understandable given Ebony's clear agitation. "What happened?"

"We managed to listen in to the announcement," Bray told her, though he didn't elaborate. She frowned, trying to gauge his mood more completely.

"It was bad news, wasn't it." Her eyes swivelled back to Ebony, halfway up the staircase and shouting furiously. The others were slow in answering the summons. "We've all been pretty busy. They might not be able to hear you."

"You've made a good start then?" asked Lex. She nodded.

"Jack had a great idea for the tunnels. He hasn't been able to make the ceiling fall in, as we weren't strong enough for that, but he threw all this junk in there, to block the water course and litter the place up, then behind that he had us use spare blankets and pillows and things. You can't see them from the outside, but it's great soundproofing."

"I'll go over it tomorrow, see if I can add a roof fall or two." Lex swung his arms around a little, as though to show off the strength that he undeniably possessed. "How about the main entrance? It doesn't look finished."

"We haven't really started on it yet. We've been trying to get more junk to throw about the place. Jack's jammed the security door, and KC broke some of the windows around the entrance. We wanted to cave the whole of that front bit in, but we weren't sure how to do it, especially since it would have made so much noise."

"We'll burn some of it down," suggested Bray. "No one will notice one more fire. It might make it easier to knock down some of what's left, too."

"Smart thinking!" Ever enthusiastic when it came to new ideas, Jack appeared from some distant hidey-hole with a spring in his step. He had recovered a little of his energy, missing earlier in the day, and had evidently been inspired by the task entrusted to him. In one hand he held a small palmtop computer, and in the other a heavy bag of tools, and his face was smudged with dirt from his work earlier on in the sewers. "Fire. I should have thought of that myself."

"Where the hell is everybody?" demanded Ebony, rather put out that her summons had only produced one person.

"Out collecting junk still, probably. I only came back to feed Brady." Trudy set her tiny daughter down on the floor. "We agreed to meet back here though. They shouldn't be long."

"Great." Ebony stalked back down the stairs, looking as though she would have been happy to hit someone. "It's not like we've got anything important to say."

"You heard something worthwhile then?" Jack set down his bag of tools, then settled himself on the wall of the old fountain, fiddling away with the palmtop. Ebony resisted the temptation to slap it out of his hand.

"Yeah, we heard plenty." Lex sat down as well, kicking disconsolately at the floor. "You wouldn't believe it."

"After what we've been seeing, I think we'd believe anything just now." It was Pride's voice, and he appeared with it, coming into the lobby from somewhere with the rest of the group at his heels. He looked pale, which was more than a mere rarity. Pride did not get ruffled - at least not as a rule. "There are tanks out there, Lex. Tanks."

"Metal things. Bloody big metal things. With guns." KC clearly didn't know whether to be overawed through fear or just through delight. "Do you suppose the guns work?"

"I'd be very surprised if they didn't." Bray looked over at Ebony, suddenly no longer wanting to spare anyone from the harsh details of what had to be said. "Go ahead. Tell them."

"It's bad, isn't it." Chloe set down the large plastic bag she had been carrying, spilling the contents of cardboard and old rags onto the floor. "Is there going to be another war, like when the Locos and the Demon Dogs were fighting each other?"

"No." Lex and Bray spoke at once, before Bray fell silent to allow Lex to complete the answer. "No, not like that. There aren't enough of us to fight them that way for one thing."

"And we can't count on the rest of the city." Ebony stared around at the others, having rather lost her desire to announce the news. Making everybody else share in her own misery had lost its appeal. "Look, Tribe Fury have taken over, in a big way. They're setting up a registration scheme, and they claim to have control over enough of the city to make that scheme work. With the firepower they seem to have, we have to believe that they really do have control, or soon will."

"Registration scheme?" pressed Tai-San. Her face showed what she thought of the idea even before hearing the details, for Tai-San had never been one for official organisations. Ebony nodded.

"You register, you're assigned a work detail. It's the only way to get food or water. The younger kids have to attend school. More like an indoctrination centre, I'll bet. Everybody else works, or trains to join Tribe Fury."

"And I suppose if you refuse to work you don't get fed." Trudy looked over at Bray, worried. "Will we be able to get enough supplies if we don't register?"

"Sure we will." He managed to dredge up most of a smile. "I've always kept us fed in the past, haven't I?" He cast a sad eye over the little band, thinking largely of Amber. "And there are a lot less of us to feed these days."

"There's a lot less food out there too," muttered Lex. Bray glared.

"Food isn't a problem," he reiterated. "Jack, how soon can you get our water purification system up and running again?"

"A day maybe, if I can concentrate on it and nothing else. Most of the stuff I need is still up on the roof, so all I really need to do is clean it up and put it back together." He closed his eyes briefly, thinking of Dal, and how they had designed the purification system together. They had done everything together back then. "If the rest of you take over sabotaging the front entrance, I can get started as soon as we're finished here."

"Good." Bray thought for a moment. "We should seal off the front of the building as best we can. Make sure that any noise we make in here doesn't get out through the broken windows. We should block up the one we broke to get in here just now too. That or close up that whole corridor. KC, did you find us some alternative exits?"

"Yeah." The boy looked pleased with himself. "There's a window on the next floor that leads onto the roof. It's well hidden by the next building along - that big warehouse wall with no windows. Then there's an old drainpipe down to the ground. A strong one. I thought that would make one good route. For a back-up there's a fire exit. It must be an old one, 'cause it just leads into a dead end, so it was all chained up and rusty. I think it might have opened into an alley once, but other buildings have been put up since, and now it's just like a little square yard. The walls aren't too high though, and with a couple of old crates as steps, we'll be able to get over pretty quick. I shouldn't think anybody on the other side would bother looking at it twice."

"Good work KC." Lex couldn't deny the boy some praise, and he knew that it would be valued all the more coming from him. "We'll all take a look later, and make sure that we can use them okay. In the meantime I'm assuming that I'm still head of security?" Ebony made a disparaging noise in answer, but everybody else seemed to be nodding. "Good. In that case here's the situation. We're up against an enemy that wants everybody in the city under their control - and that includes us. If we want to stay free, and either have a chance of escaping from the city or of fighting back someday, we can't trust anybody. We have to assume that everybody else has been rounded up and recruited by Tribe Fury, one way or another. The streets are dangerous, so nobody leaves this building for any reason without my permission - except Bray, since he's going to be hunting for food. And don't look like that KC. Pride, Ebony, the rules will be a little different for us too, but we'll talk about that later. We're up against people who have guns, bombs, tanks, aeroplanes - a proper army, at least as far as we can tell. We can't take any risks, and we can't let ourselves be seen, because if they come in here after us, we don't have a chance. Fighting them off with sticks and nets, like you guys tried with Tribe Circus that time - that won't even work as well as it did then."

"And it didn't work then at all," put in Chloe, who was still annoyed that she had not been allowed to join in with that fight, as well as various others.

"Maybe we could get some of their guns," suggested Jack. Trudy shot him a cold look.

"Are you prepared to shoot somebody?" she asked him. He coloured slightly.

"Well... no. Not me exactly. But then I'm not head of security, am I."

"If we can get hold of some of their weapons, we'd be fools not to keep them, just in case." Bray withered slightly as Trudy turned her glare on to him. "We don't have to use them, Trude. But they could be a deterrent, couldn't they."

"And besides, some of us would be prepared to use them." Ebony folded her arms, looking haughty. "Right Lex?"

"Yeah." He nodded, though he was fairly certain that nobody else in the tribe would support him in that answer. Pride and Bray would never be killers, and he wouldn't consider asking KC. Not unless things were really desperate. Tai-San was practical enough, perhaps, but he doubted that she would ever use a gun. If she ever killed it would be in hand to hand combat. "Anyway, we've got to get the things first. We'll have to run scavenging trips outside occasionally, for more than just food. There are always going to be other things we need."

"Got it all worked out, haven't you." Pride was faintly bothered by how much Lex seemed to be enjoying their new situation. "This is insane, Lex. We should just be trying to get out of the city."

"Not without Patsy and the others." Chloe folded her arms, looking determined. "You can go if you want, but I'm staying here."

"We're all staying here, Chloe. At least for the time being." Trudy watched Brady, sitting on the floor beside her, and thought about trying to make an escape with the now heavy baby strapped to her back. Silence was impossible too, since she could never know when her daughter was going to cry, or make some other sound.

"Yeah." Bray, who would far rather have been up in the hills searching for Amber, nodded in unwilling agreement. "Maybe in a while, when then things have settled down a bit, we'd have a chance. Right at the moment we'd be mad to try it. Just think what would happen if somebody in one of those tanks saw us." Ebony and Lex both nodded, remembering how it had felt to see those huge guns swivel to point at them, even though as it had turned out they had not actually been in any real danger. They were big, powerful guns. One shot and none of them would be running away anymore.

"I'd like to get a better look at one of those tanks." Unable to stay serious for long, KC was smiling hopefully. "Drive one maybe." Lex had to smile as well.

"Maybe one day we'll get the guns, the tanks and the aeroplane," he suggested. KC looked delighted, although for the most part the others didn't look impressed by the idea. Ebony rolled her eyes at their lack of humour. Some people obviously didn't like to be cheered up.

"How much food have we got for the time being?" she asked, certain that this at least would be a relatively uncontroversial subject to raise. Tai-San looked unsure.

"Probably enough for now. Maybe for the next couple of days, depending on how much we eat. No more than that."

"I'll go out first thing tomorrow," decided Bray. For all his usual confidence where collecting stores was concerned, he didn't feel very good about the idea now. The streets were a frightening place to be; far more so than they had ever seemed in the past. The Locos and the Demon Dogs had always been familiar enemies at least - people from whom he knew what to expect; people whose movements he could anticipate. Tribe Fury were strange and new, and infinitely better armed. Pride nodded slowly.

"Maybe I'd better come too. You don't know what you're going to have to face out there."

"Which is why I'd better go alone the first time. There's less chance of one person being seen."

"If you're sure." Pride liked to be self sufficient, and didn't much appreciate the idea of being dependant on somebody else for food, but he knew when to step aside. "I can work off a few frustrations smashing up the lobby I guess."

"You have frustrations?" Pretending to flirt, Ebony sidled closer to him. "There are all kinds of ways to work those off you know..."

"Yeah." Pride pointedly stepped away. "Listen, while we're on the subject of food..."

"Spoilsport." She went over to stand beside Bray instead, and contented herself with putting up his pulse rate. Trudy shot them both a telling stare.

"Chloe and I will sort out something to eat," she announced. "Bray? If you don't mind keeping an eye on Brady?"

"Oh. Yeah. Yeah, right." He stood looking down at the baby as though he had been asked to look after a bag of poisonous snakes. "I suppose we could all do with something to eat."

"I don't think I'm hungry." Chloe wrinkled up her nose at the idea of food, but Trudy hustled her towards the stairs anyway.

"Nonsense. It's been a long day, and we all need to eat something - especially after all that hard work earlier. Make the most of it. We could soon be back on rationed supplies, just like we used to be."

"Oh great. Weeks with nothing to eat but beans and old crackers." KC stared fiercely at Bray and Lex. "If that happens I'm going scouting for food myself."

"You bloody well are not." Lex's glare screamed infinitely stronger epithets, and KC failed dismally in his attempts to glare back. "Obedience, KC. I know I've encouraged you to forget about that in the past, but things are different now. We don't have the slightest idea what's going to happen, or when. So you do what you're told and play it safe, okay?"

"Yeah." KC was looking at the ground, sulking furiously. Tai-San smiled at the top of his lowered head.

"If you were captured, KC, would you be able to withstand their attempts to find out where you're from?" she asked him. He looked up, eyes burning.

"I wouldn't let you down that way again."

"But can you be sure?" asked Pride, pressing the point a little harder. "You don't know what they might do to you."

"I suppose." KC nodded slowly, rather glad that Chloe had gone, and was no longer present to witness what he saw as his humiliation. "But what about Bray? What if they catch him when he's out looking for food? He might tell them where to find us."

"I won't." Bray sounded as fierce as did KC. Perhaps he was thinking of previous captures; previous interrogations. Ebony trying to discover what had happened to Zoot; the Guardian trying to wear him down for more than one nefarious purpose. Perhaps he was just certain of his own strength. Either way he was firm in his self-belief. "They won't find out about this place from me."

"They already have," pointed out Lex. Bray glowered.

"I said I was a Mall Rat, Lex. I didn't give them a map reference. Now instead of standing around arguing, why don't we see what we can do about the lobby? We don't know how long the others will take to sort out some food."

"Sure. Pride and I will take a look around." Lex clapped Bray on the shoulder. "You've got to baby sit though."

"Huh?" Bray looked down at his niece, sitting on the floor at his feet, and looking up at him with bright eyes. "Oh. Jack...?"

"No." The younger boy hopped to his feet straight away, tucking his palmtop under his arm. "I'm... I've got... I'll be up on the roof looking at the water purification tank. Somebody give me a yell when the food's ready, yeah?" With that he disappeared, at a remarkable speed. Bray looked back at Brady again, and groaned.

"But what am I supposed to do with her? Tai-San?"

"Don't look at me." Tai-San had already taken her husband's hand, moving with him towards the nearest of KC's new exits. With the security door now jammed shut, the lobby was no longer so easy to access, but they were not too worried about having to go outside the building now. It was dark and most people would be hiding, thinking over everything that had been said at the gathering at the hotel. Tribe Fury would probably be taking it easy tonight too, content to let their new rules sink in.

"Yeah, fine." Bray sat down on the fountain wall, looking grouchy. "You go ahead then. I'll just stay here and baby sit."

"You're a natural," shot back KC, unable to resist it. Bray glared, but when the others had gone, and he was left with just the child, the fierceness of his expression wavered. A natural. The suggestion dragged his mind to thoughts of his own child, probably still fighting for its life up in the hills. What was Amber doing? Was she even still alive? He smiled uncertainly at Brady's upturned face, but his heart wasn't in it. He wished that he was still in that little barn far away from the city, where at least he could try to help Amber with her struggles. Instead he had no way of knowing what was happening, or what might have happened already.

"Good luck, Amber." It was the best that he could do; all that he could do. Whispering encouraging messages to a silent, empty room. Amber wouldn't hear them - but he had to try something, no matter how futile. Anything was better than doing nothing at all.

Chapter Text

Amber didn't know much about the rest of that day, or the night that followed it. She didn't hear the arguments that raged around her, about whether or not she could be moved, or about whether she should perhaps be left to die. Her efficient young doctor had been alone with her for some hours before reinforcements arrived; three of them, driving up the steep, rough slope in an old army jeep with little enough petrol left to power it. They didn't have their colleague's medical training, and were interested only in their leaders' plans to secure the city. They saw no importance in the feverish girl lying in a barn far from anywhere.

In the morning, when the immediacy of the crisis seemed to have lessened, and the bitterness of the arguments had abated, the young medic took a moment to check for a foetal heartbeat. She didn't really know what she was doing, but she found the muffled beat, and decided that it sounded strong enough. Not having any experience with which to compare it, she merely nodded her head in a fairly knowledgeable manner, and checked Amber's heartbeat as well. One of the other Furies joined her by the bed.

"How is she?" he asked, as unconcerned as it was possible to be. The only immediate answer was a shrug. "That good huh?"

"How do I know? I learnt how to patch up battle injuries, and deal with secondary infections. I don't know the first thing about giving birth. The manual recommended something to stop the contractions, but beyond that I'm working blind." She hunted out her thermometer, and slipped it into Amber's mouth. "I think she was ill anyway, which might have been what caused this. She's certainly ill now."

"So we still can't move her."

"I don't know. It might just make things worse for her. She does seem to be pretty ill."

"Great." Another of the gang, a girl of about sixteen with the rank insignia of a major, came to join them by the still senseless patient. "So we could be stuck here for days yet?"

"Yes. Maybe. Look, like I said last night I've probably saved her. I think I may have saved the baby. But--"

"I don't care about the details, Lisa. I just want to know when I can get back to my unit in the city."

"Then go ahead." Lisa checked the temperature on her thermometer, then shook her head in the time honoured fashion of concerned doctors everywhere. "I don't think she's been looking after herself properly just lately."

"I don't care." The major walked away, back over to the final member of their group, who was dozing in a corner of the room. She kicked one of his legs to wake him up.

"Huh?" The boy was about twelve, and bore no markings of rank. He had the look about him of a put upon subordinate, and that was exactly what he was. The major stared down at him.

"Check the jeep," she told him. He frowned, looking towards Lisa and her patient.

"But I thought--"

"Thinking isn't your job. Didn't you learn anything in basic training? Now get outside and check the fuel level. I want to know how much of the journey I'm going to have to make on foot."

"Yes ma'am." He scuttled off, looking as though he couldn't get away from her fast enough. Lisa looked concerned.

"Racha specifically detailed me to look after this girl. I shouldn't be walking out on her."

"Yeah, I know. We talked it through last night, and I wasn't much convinced by your arguments then either." The major folded her arms, using her own natural authority to trigger the ingrained obedience Tribe Fury required of all its many members. "But if you stay here you'll be stuck for several days without supplies. You don't know how long she's going to be lying there. You don't know how long it'll be before somebody manages to make it up here to relieve you. Just forget about it. Tell the others that she died. At least in the city we can all be doing something worthwhile."

"Yes, I suppose so. And it's not as if I was given definite orders about how long I was stay with her." Rather relieved that she might now not have to stay in this lonely, secluded place, Lisa began to pack away the tools of her unchosen trade. "All the same, I'm not sure that it's right to just leave her."

"What difference is it going to make? Either she wakes up or she doesn't. Having you here isn't going to change that. You don't have the facilities to put her on a drip, so if she doesn't wake up she's going to die anyway, even with you sitting right next to her."

"Yes. Yes, I know." Lisa snapped shut her medical case, then took a last look at Amber, unconscious and muttering faintly. She had been talking for much of the night about somebody called Dal, and a dream of escaping the city. "But what if Racha had special plans for her?"

"Racha wouldn't have special plans for her. At least not anything that the rest of us could ever fathom." The major turned Lisa about and started her on her way towards the door. "Let me worry about him. It's me that you have to listen to right now."

"Yes." Lisa nodded her head in acceptance of that fact, and went the rest of the way to the door without so much as glancing back. There was a faint glimmer of guilt as she climbed into the back of the jeep, but she quelled that easily enough. She had spent much of the night arguing her case for remaining; risking the wrath of a superior officer in her refusals to leave or move her patient. It wasn't really her fault if she couldn't think of any more reasons to stay.

"We're pretty low on fuel, Major." The young boy who had been sent out to look was standing to attention beside the vehicle, though the sight of him was enough to give the older members of the unit reason to cringe. Like all those who had spent only a short time as cadets under proper, adult officers, he had no real smartness or preciseness about him. No real discipline. They had concentrated less on the marching and saluting after civilisation had collapsed, in favour of the more practical skills, but the major for one still regretted that. She considered upbraiding him for his lacklustre performance, but decided that she couldn't really be bothered.

"Pretty low on fuel?" She sighed. "What kind of a report is that, Michaels? Did you check the level?"

"Well I--"

"Never mind." She climbed into the driving seat. "You can always push us, can't you, if we run out too early. Now get in."

"Yes ma'am." He climbed into the back, sitting rigidly beside Lisa. The older boy was already in the front, studying the map.

"I wonder how things went last night," he mused. The major shot him a sidelong glance.

"How do you think? They'll have read out the new rules and regulations, and made a fine display of power to back it all up. Nobody will be arguing. Not yet anyway."

"You think there will be trouble then?" he asked her. She nodded.

"Oh, there'll be trouble. Bound to be. Someone will decide that they don't want us to take over. Some tribe that likes its liberty, or that's always had a lot of power down there in the past. One of the bigger and stronger tribes, perhaps, or just one of the more idealistic ones. It won't last though."

"Can't, can it. Not against our forces." Lisa thought about the battle injuries that she would soon find herself swamped in, if there really was going to be a battle. Not her idea of fun. The major shook her head.

"Our forces don't have anything to do with it. It's simple process, that's all. People like leadership. They like to be controlled, led, shaped. Basically they don't like freedom."

"You think?" Michaels spoke very quietly, so that he couldn't be heard above the roar of the jeep as it started up. There was no rebellion in his eyes, but there was a strange sort of wistfulness. Michaels for one didn't think much of control and order, and of being stifled in the ranks of Tribe Fury - but it kept him alive and fed, so he put up with it. In his view the people of the city would take that same, pragmatic line. It was nothing to do with disliking freedom.

"Did you say something?" asked Lisa. He glanced up at her, a little worried that she might have heard. The last thing he needed when they got back to the city was extra fatigues. Punishment duty was a nightmare.

"No." He smiled uncertainly, never entirely sure where he stood with some of his superiors, but she had already lost interest. Perhaps she was thinking, belatedly, of her patient. Michaels felt bad about leaving her behind. She was ill and needed help, and she was pregnant too; but it wouldn't do any good for him to say anything. He was a nothing among these people, ranking only just above the many greater nothings who lived in the city below. It would be interesting, he thought idly, to see what would happen if somebody ever tried mobilising so many nothings, and seeing just how little people really cared for freedom - but he couldn't imagine it ever happening. He couldn't imagine anybody ever challenging the power of Tribe Fury. He couldn't believe that anybody would ever try.

The jeep moved slowly at first, then picked up speed once it started its journey downhill. The raucous sound of its engine startled the birds and other wildlife, none of whom were used to such noise. Even those who had heard engines before, in that secluded region, had long got used to the silence of the new world. Several birds flew in fear into the scraggly bushes that grew a stone's throw from the old barn, but they soon flew out again. There was somebody inside the bushes; somebody that they hadn't seen.

He was about fourteen, and he had been hiding from Tribe Fury. The threesome in the jeep had arrived shortly before him, and his hopes of sheltering over night in the barn had been dashed. He had stayed outside instead, interested by these people, in their strange uniforms, with their guns and their working motor vehicle. He had heard them shouting too, during the night; had realised that there must already have been people inside the barn, and was thankful that he had not arrived earlier and tried to enter. He heard enough to realise that somebody was sick, and was surprised to see no patient being loaded into the jeep. Clearly whoever it was that was lying inside that barn was being left behind. He wondered if there was anything that he could do, and decided that there probably wasn't. He was no doctor. All the same, there was never any question of walking away.

He went slowly to the door, for the first time cursing the bells that were attached to his shoes. He was an entertainer, who travelled this hard new world earning food by means of his gaudy trade. The bells on his shoes, the drum in his pack, the home-made lyre that hung over one shoulder - all went hand in hand with the head full of songs, jokes and stories and the pockets full of simple magic tricks. He wished that he could hush the bells now though, for he had no wish to scare whoever it was that lay inside the battered building.

"Hello?" He spoke quietly, hesitantly, well aware that there might be danger inside. Just because four people had driven away in the jeep didn't mean that there none of those armed, uniformed people still left inside the barn. There was no answer to his tentative call, and gathering his courage he pushed open the door. He couldn't see anybody, and his quavering nerves rallied slightly. Gaining in confidence he walked into the building and looked around. His shoes jingled softly, but nobody appeared to ask about it.

"Hello?" He walked further into the barn, looking about with interest. It was a rickety old building, but one that might be a good shelter for a few nights, if he needed it. There were cracks between many of the boards making up the walls, and the roof had holes in it, but the weather wasn't bad at the moment. The bells on his feet sounded distinctly more merry as he walked further into the building; but they stopped as suddenly as he did when he saw the figure lying on the makeshift bed. A girl his own age, more or less, with blonde hair showing traces of bleach, and twisted up into many small swirls that stuck up all over her head. She was pale and her face was damp with sweat, making the tribal paint run in faint trails. To his eyes she was still beautiful though, whatever the signs of illness and dishevellment. He ran to her, crouching beside her, checking her pulse and listening to the tumble of whispered words that fell from her ceaselessly moving lips. He wasn't sure of many of the words, but he was able to catch a few. He listened, feeling as though he were listening in on some private conversation, then turned his eyes away from her face. Only then did he notice that she was pregnant. Sick, alone and pregnant - through the emotional jolt of finding her that way, he couldn't help but feel angry at the people who had left her here. He threw down his pack and his lyre, and went to kneel beside her head.

"Amber? He spoke quietly, but with an urgency to his tone. He had to make her listen to him. "Amber, can you hear me?" He thought that he saw her eyelids flicker, but that was all. It was better than nothing though, and at least it meant that she was responding to some outside stimuli. He turned away from her, and began to rummage through his pack, discarding the drum, a small wooden flute, two spare, colourful shirts. At the bottom was a leather bag. He weighed it in his hand to check the contents, then took the metal drinking mug that swung from one of the straps of his pack. It was a matter of moments to shake some of the contents of the little bag into the mug, then mix it with water from his limited supply. It smelt faintly floral, or perhaps herbal, which was hardly surprising. The bag contained a dried mixture of several plants, all recognised for their medicinal properties, given to him in payment for a series of performances that he had made to a tribe now far away up the coast.

"Amber." His voice was even softer now, though most of its urgency remained. "Amber, you have to drink this. It should help to bring the fever down." Gently he lifted her head and titled the mug to her lips, watching carefully to ensure that she swallowed at least as much as she spilt. He didn't think that she was responding to his words so much as following a basic instinct to swallow the liquid, but he hoped that that didn't matter. All that he really cared about was helping her, however that might need to be done. Once he had got her to drink the fortified water there was nothing left but to set aside the mug, the water and the bag, and sit himself down beside her to watch and wait. He didn't care how long it took.

Time passed slowly in the bar, but it mattered little to the devoted sentinel. Leaving Amber's side only to collect a little firewood, and to find some more water, he watched over her for the whole of that day, spending the resultant night curled up on the floor beside her, with his spare shirts as a pillow. The next day he gathered some berries, which he crushed carefully and fed to his patient as best he could; a nourishing extra, he hoped, to compliment more of his carefully dosed water. He talked to her cheerfully all of the time, and in the quietness of the evening he played his little flute, and tapped his feet gently to add the accompaniment of his jolly little bells. When the light was gone he laid aside the flute and told her his favourite bedtime story, from the massive collection that he carried around inside his head, before curling up beside her once again.

It was a pattern that he repeated the next day, and the next. Each day he tried to get her to eat a little more, and managed to brew a little soup from the food that was left in his pack. It wasn't much, but it was something to give her besides the berries. It seemed to him that she was swallowing more strongly now; that the fever was perhaps a little less intense. Certainly her pulse was slower, stronger; more certain somehow. She muttered to herself less, and her brow felt cooler and less damp. It was with considerably more vigour that he played the flute that evening, and when the light went he sang to her, instead of telling her a story. It was a song that he knew she loved, even though he was not sure if she could hear it. It passed the time though, and he could at least hope that she was listening, to some degree. With the song over, and the darkness complete, he sat beside her for a while and listened to her sleeping, gratified that the noise was now far less than it had been. He could no longer hear the feverish whispers, and she seemed to be lying still. Pulling off his musical shoes, he lay down and drifted off to sleep.

He awoke on the morning of the fifth day to a stream of early sunlight, and the song of always cheerful birds. It was no different to any of the other mornings in this secluded place, but he felt more light-hearted as he mixed together Amber's medicine, and found himself something to eat. There was very little left now, but he was prepared to go without if need be. Unlike the children of the city he had always been well fed, and he knew that he need not worry if he had to go for a day or two without anything. There was water at least, for a small stream ran close to the barn; and there were always the berries. He would not leave Amber in order to search for proper food further away. Soon, he was sure, she would be waking up, and he was determined to be with her when that time came. She shouldn't awaken alone, when she would undoubtedly be confused and afraid, and in need of a friendly face. Only then did he wonder what she would think to see his face. In the event he did not have to wait long to find out.

She awoke just before noon, flickering her eyes open and blinking uncertainly up at the ceiling. Sitting nearby, strumming idly on his lyre, he saw her turn her head, and straight away he rushed to her side. She was frowning, but for whatever reason she did not speak yet. Probably her mind was still clouded by sleep.

For Amber it was a strange moment. She knew nothing of the passage of time. Her mind remembered intermittent music, and stories that might just have been part of her dreams, but she didn't remember anything else of her days in the barn. The last thing that she truly recalled was collapsing in pain, and of being so certain that she was going to lose her baby. Her hand was already reaching for her stomach, and she found that it was still rounded. That was good, wasn't it? It wouldn't still have that shape if the baby had gone?

Amber?" The voice was familiar, but it wasn't Bray's. She turned her head. No, not Bray. Shorter, a little more stocky perhaps, and with a roughshod tumble of naturally dark red hair, that almost hid his bright, warm eyes. Eyes that she remembered so well. She gaped.

"S-Sasha?"

"Yeah." He took her hand, holding it tightly. "How do you feel? You've been pretty sick."

"I - I don't..." Her mouth felt dry, but he was prepared for that, already reaching for a tin mug. The water inside it tasted faintly odd, and she tried to identify whatever was mixed in with it. Sasha grinned at her, looking strangely flushed and awkward.

"Herbs. Herbs and plants. Stuff, you know. For fevers."

"Oh." Her eyes roamed about, but she didn't feel strong enough yet to sit up. "Bray?"

"Bray?" He felt faintly cross. "So he's..." His eyes travelled to her stomach. "I wondered. I suppose it would have to be, wouldn't it. The timing isn't right for - for it to be... something we did."

"He's the father, yes." She reached out, putting her free hand on top of his, which was still gripping her own. "Sasha, I need to know what's happened. Where is he?"

"I don't know. There was just you here. Well, and four other people. They were wearing some kind of uniform, and they took off in a jeep. I haven't seen any sign of Bray."

"He was here." Urgency filled her. "We came here together. We were expelled from the city..."

"He got you thrown out of the city?" His irritation increased. Bray had always annoyed him, not least because it had seemed in part to be Amber's feelings for the restless and secretive youth which had influenced her decision not to leave the Mall with Sasha. The younger boy had never really believed that the strange, often silent loner was good enough for Amber, and now he felt that he had been proved right. "How the hell did he manage that? And you pregnant as well."

"It wasn't his fault." She tried to sit up, but found that she had been right to think herself not yet strong enough. "It was Ebony. You don't know what she can be like. She threw him out, and me too." She drank a little more of the water. "She's... well, she's horrible, that much you do know. Mad possibly, I don't know."

"What happened?" He settled himself more comfortably beside her, glad just to listen to her voice again. "If it's not Bray's fault, what exactly are you doing up here all alone, when you were so sick?"

"I didn't know that I was sick. Ebony... well, she took control of the city after we got rid of the Chosen." She frowned. "I don't know where you've been. Did you hear about the Chosen?"

"Yes. Rumours mostly, nothing concrete. They worshipped somebody called Zoot?"

"Yes. We ran them out of the city, and then Ebony took over. Bray and I had tried to stand against her, but it didn't work, so she had us thrown out. She's very clever."

"Yes, that much I guessed. I was nearly her slave, remember? I heard all kinds of stories about her that day, and none of them were very encouraging. She's still around then?"

"With a vengeance." She yawned, wondering why she was still tired when she seemed to have been asleep for what felt a long time. "She and Bray have... I've never been sure. Some kind of a past together. Still, that's not important. I have to find him."

"Amber..."

"The plane." Her eyes, which had been drooping shut, snapped open again. "We thought... It couldn't have been though, could it? A real aeroplane? Bray must have gone to see if there was anybody who could help."

"There was an aeroplane, yes. And loads of parachutes. I don't know how many, but I saw some of the people land. They headed for the city."

"Then I wasn't dreaming it. An aeroplane." She smiled. "I wonder who was flying it? Bray must have found one of them. The baby... It was going to be born, but it was far too early. Perhaps they're somewhere outside. Have you looked?"

"Amber, they're not outside. Listen." His eyes turned serious, and she frowned at him, faintly disturbed. "You've been unconscious here for a long time. I found you here five days ago. There's been no sign of Bray in all that time."

"But I-- Five days? Sasha, I--"

"That's not all." He thought about the four people in the jeep, with their uniforms and their guns. "The people from the aeroplane. They weren't good people, Amber. Like I said, they converged on the city, and that night I saw fires burning down there. I saw explosions, Amber, and I heard gunshots. The aeroplane, the parachutists - it was all part of an invasion force. They were here too. Some of them were here in this barn with you. Maybe Bray did find them, to get them to help you, and maybe they did stop the baby from being born. I don't know. All I know is that Bray isn't here now, and he hasn't been here for five days."

"But then..." She closed her eyes. "What have they done to him?"

"Who can tell." He didn't know what to say then. His job was cheering people up, but this was the wrong time for stirring words, and jokes would just be crass. She opened her eyes again, looking up at him.

"But you do think that they've got him?"

"I think they must. He always loved you, even I can't deny that. I'm sure he wouldn't have left you alone like that, for so long, without a good reason. They must have taken him to the city."

"Then that's where I'm going." Again she tried to sit up, but again she didn't make it. Sasha shook his head, amused and exasperated, as well as rather sad.

"You need to rest. You need proper food too. If you'll promise not to move, I'll go out and scavenge around a bit. Okay? Then we can talk about heading for the city tomorrow maybe."

"Okay." It was easier just to agree, for she didn't really have the strength for anything else. Her eyes drifted shut again, and Sasha smiled grimly down at her dozing form. So it was Bray who still had claim to her heart, and she was willing to risk everything; willing to face who knew what down in the city; just to try to find him again. Well he could hardly let her do that alone. Just as there had never been a chance of him abandoning her in the barn, even before he had found out who she was, there was no chance of him leaving her now. He would go with her, and he would do what he could to help her find Bray - always supposing that he was still alive. What happened then would be up to Fate alone.

The stream was not big enough for fishes, and he was not hunter enough to capture anything else, so he contented himself with wandering about on the search for plants. The barn had obviously been a part of a farm at some time, although he suspected that it had been abandoned a long time before the adults had died. Traces of the farm remained though, and he found a patch of potatoes run wild, and dug up a few that seemed worth having. He found some assorted greenery as well, playing safe and sticking only to those few things that he recognised, and could be sure were not poisonous. He felt a swell of jealousy when he remembered the proficiency with which Bray had hunted out stores for a whole tribe, running the gauntlet in the dangerous streets to find food that nobody else could get. He tried to quash the jealousy, and concentrated on doing what he could. The stores might be less than Bray could manage, but they would be enough.

He didn't hurry back, suspecting that Amber would be asleep, and was proved to be right. Taking his time he rebuilt his little fire, and cut up the potatoes, setting them to boil in the metal bowl that was his only utensil beside the mug and a bent old spoon. The various greens he chopped and shredded, and added them to the water when it seemed that the potatoes were nearly cooked. He felt quite proud of himself, for he usually relied on the tribes that he entertained when it came to food, and rarely had to do any proper cooking for himself. Amber awoke just as he was draining the water out of the bowl, and he greeted her with a typically cheery smile.

"Sleep well?"

"Too well. I shouldn't be so tired if I've been asleep for five days.

"Unconscious, not asleep. It must make a difference." Tipping half of the food onto a piece of wood he had cleaned up to serve as a plate, he handed her the bowl and the spoon. "Here. And careful, the bowl is hot." He grinned. "You'd best try it first, and make sure it's not poisonous. I haven't done any cooking since school."

"Well it smells good." She managed to sit up, and ate the food slowly. "Tastes good too."

"Really?" Surprised, he tried some of his own. "Yeah, not bad I suppose. Could do with some white sauce though. Maybe some filo pastry."

"And garlic." They shared a smile. "No, honestly. It's good, Sasha. And just what the doctor ordered I think." Her face fell momentarily, when the mention of doctors brought somebody very particular to mind. Immediately concerned Sasha caught her hand.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes. Sorry. I-- When I woke up and saw you, for a moment the last few months sort of went away. But it was all real, every day of it, and all kinds of things have happened since I saw you last. It's Dal..."

"Something has happened to Dal?" Sasha had fond memories of the boy he had befriended in the hills. Dal had been trying to escape from the city, and had left the Mall Rats behind temporarily, when he and Sasha had been captured by slave traders and sold to the Locos. It was thanks to Amber that they had been freed. "You were friends a long time, weren't you. He told me about you when we were prisoners together. You talked about him a lot when you were unconscious, too."

"I did?" She wondered what she had said. "Well he's dead, Sasha. He never did anything to hurt anybody; just tried to take care of everybody. And now he's dead. He died fighting the Chosen, and it was all for nothing if somebody else has only come to take their place."

"Not for nothing, no. No fight for freedom is pointless, even if the freedom only lasts a day. We were all meant to be free, Amber."

"Then we'll have to free the city again, won't we. Dal died to free it last time. The least we can do is try to help it now. At least... at least that's what I have to do. You probably want to be off."

"Off?" He laughed. "No. I'm not letting you go down there on your own."

"Somehow I knew you'd say that. I hoped it, anyway." She stared at the remainder of her food, thinking about all that she had discovered since waking up. There was so much to think about, and so much that was going to need to be done. "We're going to have to find a better hideout, you know - one that these uniformed people don't already know about. I'm not sure that I can walk too well, so I'm going to need your help. We shouldn't stay here any longer."

"No problem. We'll find somewhere, and I'll carry you there if I have to."

She smiled. "I don't think that'll be necessary. At least I hope it won't. But I'm not sure when I'll be able to walk as far as the city, or do the things that will need doing when we get there. I have my baby to think about as well as Bray, and I've already nearly lost it once."

"Then we'll take it easy. A day at a time. If Bray is still alive then a few more days - even weeks - isn't likely to make any difference to him. And if he's... well. You have to take it at your own pace anyway. He'd understand."

"And you don't mind waiting? Sticking around?"

"I've got nowhere better to go. If there are people with guns down in the city, who's to know where they'll go next? Maybe I should be helping you get rid of them. Can't always go running off looking for the next appreciative audience, can I."

"Thank you. I know what you think of Bray..."

"Forget it." He turned his attention back to his food. "Just eat, Amber. Build your strength up. When the time comes we'll do what we have to do."

"And see what we have to see." She thought about all that he had said - fires all over the city, explosions, gunshots. What was going on down there? Absently she touched her stomach, and wondered if she should really be going to find out; but knew that she didn't have a choice. She couldn't stay away. She had to get down there and find out what was happening. She had to find out what had become of Bray. The thought of it made her skin prickle with fear, and her stomach churn with all manner of worries. What might have happened to all of her friends in the five days that she had been unconscious? Her imagination alone could answer that question, and right now it was telling her things that she didn't want to consider. Afraid, she reached out for Sasha's hand, and was glad to find it so readily available. It was good that he was here; good that Fate had brought her an old friend. Sasha was somebody that she knew she could rely on now that Bray had gone. She squeezed his hand a little tighter, and relaxed just a little, glad that he had come back into her life. With only hardship and uncertainty ahead, the boy now sitting beside her was of vital import - and she found herself praying that she would never be apart from him again.

Chapter Text

A city can change a lot in a week, when the circumstances are right; and the Mall Rats saw their city change significantly. Most of the tribes registered with Tribe Fury, and of those that didn't do so immediately, a few days of hunger and of watching patrols march up and down the streets, soon turned the majority around. The place became a military outpost, with guards at every major cross roads, and checkpoints scattered everywhere. The registered tribes had been given identity cards, and anybody caught without one faced so far unknown penalties. Lex had decided that the Mall Rats had to get hold of one, although nobody had great hopes that they would be able to forge their own.

They had spent most of the week shut up inside the mall, listening to the shouting of the marching troops, and the screams of their occasional victims. Fortunately there were few enough of the latter, for most of those who remained unregistered had the sense to stay hidden. For the most part they were the independent kind; the experienced ones who had been surviving on the streets for a long time, and knew as well as the older Mall Rats how not to be caught. It was through Bray that the Rats knew of the situation outside; and they listened to tales of checkpoints and identity cards with horror. He told them of the tanks that rolled about on the wider streets, and of the youthful soldiers posted on the roofs, all scanning the streets with the telescopic sights on their rifles. He told them of the new recruits just beginning their basic training in the yards of the city's old schools, and of the battalions of youngsters being marched off each morning to their own new schools. He didn't know what they were taught there, but he didn't expect to find many of the old subjects on the curriculum. He told them too of the fortifications that already encircled the hotel. The fencing made from old metal barrels and sand bags, and the barbed wire that finished it all off so unpleasantly. Of the machine gun on the front steps, and the rumours of what befell the prisoners who were taken past the once familiar front door. Chloe was depressed, and for once Tai-San's attempts to cheer her had had no effect. KC was caught between fear of what might be outside, and anger that he hadn't yet been allowed out to see it. Tai-San tried to meditate, though the city and the mall were full of feelings too disturbing to allow her a proper sense of peace; and Jack sat alone in his workshop, perfecting the system of security cameras and alarms that he had first begun to design before the other members of the tribe had ever arrived in the Mall. It was hard and painstaking work, but it helped to dispel the darkness that had rested in his mind since his return from the distant prisons of the Chosen, and in many ways he was glad to be doing it. For Lex, Pride and Ebony there was no such work to be done, and they argued with each other, and made plans that they knew would get them nowhere. Trudy despaired of them, but they paid little attention to her attempts to calm them. She spent much of her time alone with Brady, although Bray had taken to visiting her again, when he wasn't wandering around outside. It was like the old days in that regard; the days when he had sought out her company, when they had both been avoiding the wrath of an irritable Lex. Bray had worries that he couldn't discuss with the others, but Trudy was happy to talk to him about Amber and the baby, and Bray's presence had the comforting effect on her that it always had done. It was nice to sit and talk, despite with all that was going on outside.

They had finished their camouflage operations early. The lobby had been blocked off, burnt and wrecked, all by the cover of night. Bray had decorated the outside walls with graffiti, using his skill as an artist to copy the tags and styles of many different tribes, giving the building the look of a place long trashed and rendered useless to everyone. Lex had caved in a section of the tunnel, so that only real rats could move through them now, and he and Pride had covered the manhole, that for long had been their secret link with the outside world, with the biggest and heaviest pieces of rubbish that they could find. They felt more secure then, although none of them believed that they would ever again feel truly safe.

It was at the end of that first week, when they were all sitting quietly in the canteen, eating a strangely patchwork meal, that Lex raised the subject of going outside. He had been thinking about it for some time, especially when he watched Bray setting out on his solo excursions. Lex was a man of action, and he didn't like being cooped up inside. It had been alright when there had still been things to do to the Mall; disguising it, fortifying its weaker points, trying to soundproof as much of it as they could. Now that they had done all that they could they were all growing more restless. Chloe was fretting about Amber and Patsy, although her new maturity meant that her worries were less obvious than they might once have been. She snapped irritably instead of getting upset, and KC in particular no longer knew how to approach her. He was still too young to really understand why she seemed cross, as was she, and the pair of them were fighting almost constantly. Trudy and Tai-San tried to keep them occupied with various errands and activities, but it proved impossible. Lex was even worse. He paced up and down the corridors, shouting at Jack for leaving pieces of his equipment lying about; trying to pick fights with Pride and Bray; arguing with Tai-San over everything that happened or didn't happen. Pride prowled about just as restlessly, though with less inclination to shout; transformed in that week into a silent, moody caricature of his usual self. He argued with Bray whenever Amber's name came up, but for the most part reserved his irritability for Ebony. She enjoyed trying to anger him, working out her own frustrations on all three of the older male members of the tribe. Lex was easily annoyed, and she entertained herself by suggesting that it was damaging to his manhood to stay behind in the Mall whilst Bray went off outside. Pride she pretended to flirt with, and tried to wind him up about all the many things that might be happening to Amber. It was her own special way of having fun, and she liked to see the sparks fly. Bray she didn't need to annoy. She got her entertainment there by nestling closer to him whenever she got the chance; sitting close to him at mealtimes, and wandering into his room at odd hours. It was brazen flirtation, and based on genuine affection. It might be a good way of entertaining herself, but she meant every compliment; enjoyed every touch. Bray sometimes pushed her away and sometimes didn't, and although he never responded properly to her moves, let alone retaliated in kind, she kept hoping that he would. It all got a good response from Trudy, too, which added to the entertainment value.

So it was that they were all on edge when Lex made his suggestion. Pride was sitting alone, glaring at his bowl of reconstituted, dried vegetable chilli and tinned potatoes, and thinking of his old home in the woods far beyond the city. Tai-San was mediating in yet another fledgling argument between KC and Chloe, and Bray was trying to decide whether to move away from Ebony's teasing hands, or just to put up with it, and hope that she would grow bored. Trudy was watching with an expression that, to his badgered mind, was bordering dangerously on jealousy, and that worried him even more than Ebony's blatant flirtation. Annoyed at everybody's apparent self-absorption, Lex banged on the table as loudly as he could with a clenched fist, and made Chloe and Brady jump.

"We need to go out," he announced, in a rather more forceful tone than he had intended. The faint hum of conversation stopped abruptly.

"Outside?" Trudy shook her head. "Lex, I don't know. It's bad enough Bray risking--"

"We need food, Trudy," broke in Bray, already long used to this particular argument. It bored him now just as it had bored him in the old days. He had always preferred the risks of being outside to being stuck in the Mall with a gang of irritable and hormonal children, all fighting amongst themselves, and he wouldn't be put off it by Trudy worrying over him. She glared at him, then turned her attention back to Lex.

"What I mean is, what if you do take a group outside, and something happens? We could probably live with losing Bray to Tribe Fury, but if we lose several of you the rest of us will be lost."

"I know." Lex met Tai-San's worried look, and offered her a rakish grin. "Don't worry, we're not going to get arrested, or shot, or anything like that. There are things that we need, though, and we can't expect Bray to get it all for us. Wouldn't necessarily be possible, anyway. We need stuff that it's going to take a proper operation to get."

"Such as?" asked Trudy, who could think of several things herself, but didn't want to encourage anybody. KC brightened.

"Guns," he suggested, rather liking the idea. "And maybe some of those grenades. Then we could fight properly, if they ever find us in here."

"Not a bad idea, really," conceded Lex, despite Trudy's obvious outrage. "I was thinking about these identity cards though. Be useful if we could get our own, just in case. That way if one of us ever gets stopped by a patrol we'd be allowed on our way again, so long as we've got a good cover story to back everything up. Without the card it's instant arrest."

"They won't be easy to forge," commented Pride. Lex nodded.

"Yeah. But you and Bray are both pretty good artists, and if there's anything smaller, like hidden microchips and all the stuff there used to be in that sort of thing in the old days, Jack will find it."

"Bound to be bar-codes," offered Jack, immediately interested. "There's scanners all over this place of course. I'd have to get one working again, but that'd help me work out how to store the information. I don't know how to make the stripes though, so we might not be able to make the codes ourselves."

"We'll worry about that later." Lex rubbed his hands together, warming to the theme now. "Okay, so we're agreed then? We need to go outside."

"I'll go," piped up KC. Lex shot him a look that immediately crushed his hopes.

"No you won't," he said, just in case the stare hadn't been answer enough. KC glowered.

"I can move fast. And I've got eyes in the back of my head. I was surviving on the streets before I fell in with you lot, and I--"

"And you've got yourself, and the rest of us, into plenty of trouble," interrupted Chloe, not really in the mood to listen to him. She wanted to go out as well, but knew full well that it would never be allowed. KC looked crestfallen.

"I could get out there and back without anybody seeing me," he muttered. Lex softened a little.

"Yeah KC. You probably could. But I'm sorry. I can't take that many people out, and there are others that I need. Bray will have to come, as he's the one who's most familiar with the way things are out there. And I need Pride for his fighting skills, just in case."

"And you need me," added Ebony. Lex shook his head.

"No way. I'm not taking any--"

"Defenceless girls?" Her disgust was harsh enough to take rust off metal. "I've proved more than once that I fight better than you do, Lex. If you're going then so am I."

"Ebony, I--"

"She's right, Lex." Either through his desire to avoid an argument, or because he genuinely supported her cause, Bray spoke up to defend Ebony. "She fights better than most of us, and she knows the streets as well as I do. Don't forget that she led the Locos, and they ruled this sector and a whole lot of others. If we have to split up, she'll be as much use to you as I would be, in getting you back here unseen."

"Huh." Lex wasn't impressed, but he nodded his acceptance. "Alright. The four of us. And no KC, you are not coming just because she is. Four is already more than I'd like. Maybe next time."

"Yeah, sure." KC folded his arms, the better to look sulky and despondent. "I'll bet."

"I'm glad you're not going, KC." Trudy was becoming quite adept as a peacemaker. "With the rest of them gone we'll only have Tai-San here to protect us. Jack and I aren't terribly good at fighting."

"I am," shot back Chloe, though not with much force. KC brightened a little, happy to think that he might be of some use after all. Lex smirked, making sure that the younger boy did not see him do so, then looked towards Bray.

"Well?" he asked, searching for some kind of comment on his plan It seemed a strange time to ask for an opinion, since it seemed that he was already decided on his course of action, but Bray nodded slowly.

"There are things that we need, sure. I can probably get the electrical wire that Jack's been after, but some things I can't get on my own. We need at least one of those big barrels if we're going to be able to recharge batteries again. You can build another windmill, right Jack?"

"Yeah, sure. I've done it before, and it's not like it's that tough. I'll need something to use as a mast, too though. Some long pieces of wood like I used last time, remember?"

"Well that won't be at all difficult," muttered Ebony. "We can creep through the streets carrying a couple of roof rafters, and I'm sure no one will notice."

"Hey, if you want to go without power for the rest of... of however long this occupation is going to last, that's fine." Jack leaned back in his chair and glowered as much as he dared. "Bray can't keep getting us batteries. He needs to concentrate on food. Besides, there just aren't that many around anymore. There haven't been for a long time. When the Chosen were running things nobody really needed batteries that much, but since they left electricity consumption has gone up again, and any battery reserves anybody had are gone. I'll bet that what's left is already in the hands of Tribe Fury."

"I wouldn't be surprised. They'll want control of all resources like that." Bouncing Brady absently on her knee, Trudy spoke in the voice of one who was looking back into her memory. "It's what occupying forces always want, isn't it. To control everything, and to keep the native people as fully subjugated as possible."

"You some kind of military expert now?" growled Lex. She smiled at him, by now more or less accustomed to his irritability. It was no worse than it had been in the old days, after all, before the development of the antidote had brought a peace of sorts to all of them.

"No. Just a history fan. It was my favourite subject at school."

"Yeah, well history or not, we're not going to be finding many batteries out there now. We've got a pretty good store still, but most of them are out of power." Jack shrugged hugely, apparently absolving himself of all responsibility. "So it's up to you lot whether or not I try to recharge them."

"We'll get you your pieces of wood, Jack." Bray was already thinking of likely places to look. "So we want an ID card, some wood and a barrel - or something else that'll spin round to make the windmill. Anything else?"

"I need some more things for Brady." Trudy spoke almost apologetically, but Bray gave a short nod.

"Right. I can't promise anything, but baby stuff has always been one of the few things that didn't all get looted months back. I'll see what I can find."

"We're going to have limited time, Bray," pointed out Pride. Bray glared at him.

"We can dress her in scraps of material, and feed her on our stuff mashed up, but there are other things she needs that we can't find here. She needs milk. Trudy hasn't had any of her own in a long while. She also needs to be kept clean, and the soap we have left here is too harsh for her. There are other things too."

"Oh hark at the baby expert." Ebony's voice dripped with sarcasm, but if it was an attempt at humour Bray did not respond well to it. His eyes went cold and hard as he shot her a bloodcurdling stare..

"It's something I've had to think about just lately. I had a baby of my own to plan for, remember? Until somebody decided to throw me and Amber out of the city, and brought on what might just have turned out to be a miscarriage."

"Oh, we're back to that one, are we. I'm sorry Bray. I'm sorry that Amber might have lost your baby. I'm sorry that you're here and she isn't." Ebony's sigh proved her lack of real contrition. "So we're looking for the nearest maternity shop then are we?"

"There's an old warehouse that the Demon Dogs used to hoard things in, which always had a good supply of baby stuff. It's still there, and I can't see Tribe Fury having found it yet unless somebody's taken them to it. Half of it's underground." He was intentionally looking away from her now, talking more to the group as a whole. "There's never been much food there, but there always used to be quite a collection of junk. The Demon Dogs used to decorate their headquarters with metal - anything shiny - so they might have some barrels in there. Pretty much all the others have been taken by Tribe Fury to make fencing."

"So maybe all we really need to worry about is the ID card." Pride raised his eyebrows at Lex. "I take it you have a plan?"

"Well sure. We grab somebody, don't we."

"And let him know that we're trying to get hold of an identity card? Lex, that plan is worse than useless. If we grab somebody and take his card, Tribe Fury will probably play safe and issue another design. Our forgeries, if we ever manage to make any, will be out of date before they're even finished."

"Well what do you suggest then?" asked Lex, rather put out. Ebony shrugged.

"Take more than just the card, I suppose. Whoever we stop, we'll have to take everything he's got. Cover what we're really after."

"He'll still have to report that we took his card. They still might decide to play safe and change them all." Pride shook his head. "If we're going to get a card, we have to make sure that nobody knows we've got it."

"How do we do that?" asked Bray. Pride didn't answer, and didn't even meet his eyes. Trudy stood up, her chair almost falling over backwards as she did so.

"No." She said it with as much force as she could muster, then said it again just to make sure. "No. You are not going to kill anybody. You can't. We're supposed to be the good guys. Bray..."

"Nobody is going to kill anybody." Bray shot Lex a murderous look, as soon as the other boy seemed about to protest. "We'll find another way."

"You'd better." Tai-San had been quiet for a while, listening to the conversation, but she spoke up now. "Killing somebody for a piece of card, especially if that person isn't even a member of Tribe Fury, but is one of the people of this city, would be very bad for our tribe. Our spirit will be weakened."

"Yeah. Well that's as maybe." Lex looked slightly chastened, though not by a great deal. "That's enough talk about it, anyway. Are we going or not?"

"You're going now?" Tai-San went to him immediately. "I should meditate first. This might not be the right time, and I can find out when you have your best chance of success. At the very least I can bring you all added strength."

"We're going now." He gave her what he hoped was a winning smile. "Don't sweat, babe. We'll be back before you know it."

"But Lex - at this time of day?" Never usually so nervous, Tai-San found it hard now to let him go. He rather enjoyed that, and softened his expression slightly.

"It has to be this time of day. I know it seems to make sense to wait until dark, but we can't. If we're seen outside during the curfew then we've got far less chance of escaping. They'll hunt us down with all their resources. If we go when there are still other people about, we might just be ignored."

"Somehow I doubt that." Ebony cast a disdainful look around the rest of the tribe, secretly rather sad that she had nobody to say goodbye to herself. "I'll see you lot outside."

"Yeah." Bray gave Trudy a rather distant smile that was not really a goodbye at all, then followed on after Ebony. "Don't be too long, Lex."

"Huh?" Rather surprised at how quickly they were all leaving, Lex turned to look towards Pride, but his attention seemed caught by something else. He sighed.

"I think that means that we're going right now. Probably my fault for going on about it."

"Come home, Lex." She gave him a quick hug, then stepped back. Proper goodbyes weren't for audiences. He grinned, and tugged her back into his arms for a kiss.

"If you're here, of course I'll come back. Can't let you get so restless you go and wind up in KC's arms, can I."

"Hey." KC wasn't sure whether or not that was an insult, but he seemed inclined to take offence to it anyway, just to be sure. Tai-San smiled.

"Falling into KC's arms might have its advantages, Lex. But come back alive and I won't have to try it."

"I'm only going shopping, babe." Rather enjoying the protracted farewell, he offered a jaunty grin to the rest of the assembled company, then strode off. Pride followed close behind, wondering vaguely about May. She might have given him such a farewell, once, but now he had no idea where she was. It was for the best, probably, since he had been planning to end their relationship anyway, but he still felt a flutter of confused guilt over her now. Guilt or just plain loneliness; he wasn't sure.

They went down the drainpipe at carefully measured intervals, with Ebony keeping watch from the roof, and Bray from the ground. Nobody seemed to be in sight, which was common enough, for most of the other city dwellers were away now during the day, doing their delegated work for Tribe Fury. Only the main streets saw much traffic, either mechanical or human. Lex looked left and right, determined to maintain his position as head of security, and therefore leader of the expedition, then prepared to give his orders.

"Which way's this warehouse we're heading for?" asked Pride, rather taking the wind out of his sails. Bray pointed rather indeterminately towards the east.

"That's the best route. There aren't so many tall buildings, so it'll be harder for their roof sentries to spot us."

"Yeah, but we don't want it to be too obvious that we're sneaking around out here without permission, do we. Wouldn't a more commonly used route be better?" Lex stared towards the east as though he also knew where the warehouse was, and could somehow also come up with a possible route. "Besides, we need to see somebody, if we're going to get hold of an ID card."

"Lex, forget about that, yeah? We don't have a chance to actually forge the thing once we've got it, and like Trudy said, we--"

"I don't give a damn what Trudy said. She's always been moaning about something for as long as I've known her." Recent inaction had brought out all of Lex's old irritability, and he unleashed it now with a vengeance. "We need to get that card. I know what Tai-San said as well, so don't try that one either."

"Right now we don't have to worry about what anybody said or thinks." Ebony sounded very patient, which was a sure sign that she was feeling anything but. "If we don't get moving soon, and start keeping our voices down, we're not going to be in a position to get anybody's ID card. Or anything else."

"She's right." Pride was looking about like an animal searching for a sign of a likely predator. "We're not exactly exposed here, but that's rather beside the point. We shouldn't hang about by the Mall and risk drawing attention to it."

"This way then." Bray was already off, his skateboard giving him the extra speed that had saved his life more than once. Lex swore under his breath.

"I'm supposed to be in charge!" he spat, managing only at the last moment to stop himself from shouting. Ebony smirked at him.

"You be in charge if it pleases you, Lex. We'll just carry on ignoring you." She hurried ahead before he could think of a suitable reply, and was soon as distant a figure as Bray, moving with a stealth and speed that was admirable. Pride went next, his own movements almost as fluid. He had never grown accustomed to the streets, but he could move within them well enough if he thought of them as just an extension of his beloved rural world. Lex glowered at his diminishing form, then took off after them all, dodging from trash bin to trash bin, alley mouth to alley mouth, and wondering how he was supposed to know if there was anybody watching. At least when they had been hiding from the Locos they hadn't had to worry about people standing on buildings, and using telescopic sights.

They came to a halt at a cross roads, where a wider road met their own little one. A tank stood a few hundred yards up ahead, facing away from the little group, but presenting them with a decidedly off-putting silhouette. A uniformed figure stood beside it, apparently talking to somebody through the open hatch.

"What now?" asked Pride. Bray pointed to the unmistakable shape of a guard standing on the roof of a building.

"He's always up there. They're very ordered though. Their patrols are like clockwork. He'll stand at each corner of the building for a full minute, then pace along the edge to the next corner."

"Sounds like a good loophole in the system," commented Lex. Bray nodded.

"True. But he must have a hell of a field of vision standing on one of those corners. We can't make a move until he's on the far one, with his back to us. Otherwise he'll see us for sure. We have to cross the road and get into the lobby of that building he's on."

"But that's pretty damn close to that tank," pointed out Ebony. Bray nodded again.

"I know. The tank itself isn't a problem. As far as I can gather they can only see out the front, unless the viewing ports at the side are open. It's that guy standing next to it that's the threat."

"And how do we know from over here whether the viewing ports at the side are open?" asked Lex. Pride smiled rather roguishly.

"Someone could always go and look," he suggested. Ebony smiled.

"Well if you're volunteering..."

"You don't need to go and look," interrupted Bray. "The guy standing next to the tank is talking through the hatch at the front. I think. So that probably means the side ports are shut. I don't know. You just have to take your chances around those things."

"Maybe one of us should distract the guy at the side," suggested Lex. Ebony grinned.

"For a head of security you can be a bit dim about these things at times, Lex. We don't want them to know that we're here. If one of us distracts them, they'll know."

"And the guy standing over there won't chase after you, either. The tank will just turn its head around and shoot in your direction." Pride was eyeing the cumbersome vehicle with an odd expression, unhappy that he had in some way brought it to life by referring to part of it as a head. Perhaps it would be better to think of it as an animal, he wondered; at least then he might be better prepared to deal with it. Lex scowled. It hurt his feelings that this lot were never prepared to see him as their leader. One small hole in his reasoning, and they were treating him like a fool.

"Yeah, fine. Whatever. We don't distract them then. So just how the hell are you planning to get past?" His anger was enough to make the others relent a little, and Bray pointed to a manhole cover positioned by the edge of the road.

"We have to hope that the guy by the tank doesn't look around, but I think we'll have enough time to open that and get into it while the guard on the roof is looking away."

"The drain should lead under the building I suppose. It looks like an office block, so they must have had bathrooms." Lex nodded. "Have you used the drain before?"

"No. I've never needed to. It can't be that different to the one back at the mall though, can it?"

"Do I look like an expert on drains?" Lex shook his head, exasperated at everything, and eager to be moving again. "Alright. That guy up on the roof is moving away. If we're going to make a move..."

"Yeah." Bray hitched his skateboard onto its strap across his shoulders, and glanced back at Ebony and Pride. "Keep your eyes open."

"But don't shout too loud if you have to give a warning. No need to let them know you're here too." With this last, Lex took off for the manhole cover, running at a fast crouch. Bray followed close behind, throwing himself flat on the ground.

"It looks pretty rusted," he hissed. Lex nodded.

"Can't be that bad yet though, right?" He grabbed hold of the cover and gave it a tug. "What's the guy on the roof doing?"

"Standing." Bray joined in with the pulling. "Damn it. It won't move."

"Just keep pulling. We'll have to wait until he's gone around again before we can get the others over here too." Lex gave another pull at the cover, and they heard the distinct grating sound of moving metal.

"At this rate we're not even going to get ourselves down there, let alone the others." Bray tugged harder, counting under his breath to mark the passing seconds before the guard left the far corner of the roof. "What are they doing over at the tank?"

"Don't know. Not looking." Lex was speaking through gritted teeth, jaw clenched fiercely tight. "You had to have this bright idea, didn't you."

"You try finding a way through this city just now, damn it!" Together they gave the cover another, violent tug, and felt it at last come free. "Quickly!"

"I'm being quick!" Lex dragged the heavy disk of metal onto the road next to him, then all but threw himself down the hole. Bray came after, feet slipping on the ladder, skateboard knocking against the walls. They could no longer see the sentry on the roof, but they felt sure that they had been only just in time.

"That was close." Not caring that he was standing in an inch of murky water, Lex leaned back against the curved, stone wall. "Do you think he'll see that the cover is off?"

"I doubt it. He won't be looking for something like that." Bray went a short distance down the tunnel. "It looks okay down here. We just have to be careful not to go too far."

"So you want to tell me why we had to come this way at all?" Lex followed him, wishing that there was more light so that his glare could have its proper effect. "There have to be other ways of getting to this warehouse. Coming this way is crazy."

"Not really. I mean, yeah, sure there are other ways. Just none that I can be sure are safe anymore. The main road would be just plain foolhardy, the old high street is too exposed. There are too many roof sentries around there. Then the other route goes past the old shoppers' car park near the community centre, and they have about fifty recruits going through training exercises there. We'd never get by without being seen."

"And those are the only routes?"

"Without taking major detours, or going through Wildcats' territory, yeah." Bray realised he had lost all sense of time, and had no idea where in his circular manoeuvres the roof sentry would be. He swore softly, annoyed with himself for the slip. "There's a lot to keep in mind when you're out here. It's not just about getting from A to B."

"Yeah. So I gather." Any mention of the things Bray had to do outside, when he himself was sitting back in the Mall, was always certain to make Lex extremely grouchy. "Found your feet again pretty damn quickly, didn't you."

"A week can be a long time, especially in this city." Bray smiled awkwardly. "It's weird, but it's like... I got so used to living this way, and then when we started to get the city running again, before the Chosen came, I didn't have to do it anymore. When we were running the Resistance together it was different, but I was almost enjoying it. I thought it was just the adrenalin, but now... It's like we're back in the good old days or something. Like I actually enjoy living like this."

"Yeah." For a moment Lex's irritation faded away. "I know what you mean. I adjusted so quickly after the adults died it was weird. There wasn't time to think about it then, but later I realised how natural it all seemed. Living that way, and having to fight all the time. I almost got bored later, when we thought we had a sort of peace, before the Chosen came. I was glad when we had to fight then." He shrugged. "But then you've got to adapt, haven't you. In this world I mean. The way things are..."

"Yeah. Sure." Bray wasn't at all reassured by Lex's words. "It's almost scary though. It's been a week, and I've settled back into some kind of routine. I've already got half of this sector mapped out again, and I know where most of the Independents are; the ones like us, who haven't joined Tribe Fury. I'm good at this."

"Yeah." Lex smiled, a hint of something that might have been embarrassment showing in his eyes. "It's almost like, if the adults came back - or if somehow we managed to rebuild the old world again - I'd be sorry to see it happen. What would we have been doing, if the Virus hadn't come? Right now I mean? I'd have been cutting school, hanging out on street corners, getting into fights. I guess you'd have been thinking about applying to university. Almost boring in comparison."

"Maybe." Images of his younger brother drifted through Bray's mind, and he closed his eyes for a moment. "I think I'd like to be bored right now."

"Well that's where we're different, isn't it." Lex clapped him on the shoulder, which just a little more force than was entirely friendly. "But forget it for now. You hear something?"

"Footsteps." Disapproval showed on Bray's face. "They should know better."

"Always supposing it's them and not the people from that tank." Lex couldn't resist a grim smile at the idea. "Sounds like they're in a hurry." He went back to the ladder, looking up as Pride's feet skidded into view. The tall boy almost fell down the hole, landing with considerably less than his usual agility. He moved aside immediately for Ebony, who slid halfway down the ladder, and struggled to pull the manhole cover shut. Lex went up to help her.

"Are you sure the pair of you made enough noise?" he asked. Ebony shot him a poisonous look.

"They're on the move out there," she told him, in a hiss that was longing to become a shout. "Six of our little uniformed friends, and at least as many civilians. Ragged bunch with skin heads." She flashed a quick glance back at Bray. "They looked like Wildcats. Are they still together?"

"Yeah. I ran into them a couple of days ago. They must be getting desperate if they've come this far out of their nest." He started to lead the way down the tunnel. "Come on. Even if the Furies didn't see you, one of the Cats might. We don't want to have to deal with them right now."

"They're that bad? They looked a pretty miserable bunch." Pride fell in behind him, but Bray didn't seem to have heard. He didn't answer immediately.

"They're nuts," filled in Ebony. Bray shook his head.

"Not in the conventional sense exactly. They used to have a reputation as real troublemakers. They'd fight anyone. Nobody could scare them, and even Zoot didn't bother trying to take them out. They practically live on chemical fumes. Glue, paint, all that stuff. They never seem bothered about finding food."

"Like I said, they're nuts." Ebony pushed past Pride to take a place next to Bray. "I'd rather run into the whole of Tribe Fury than have to deal with that band out there, so let's get a move on, okay? Just to be on the safe side."

"I didn't think you were scared of anybody." Lex was amused to see her concern now, but she didn't respond with her usual anger or amusement. Instead she shook her head, slowly and deliberately.

"You don't get it, do you Lex. They're nuts. They spend all day getting high on paint fumes, and drinking who knows what. Whatever they've got inside their heads these days probably stopped being brain cells a long time ago. They're insane. If they catch us, being the best fighter in the country wouldn't do you any good. They'd tear us apart. Literally." As if to drive home her words the hammer of distant gunfire echoed dully about in the tunnels, and the foursome froze.

"That guy on the roof," commented Pride. "Your Wildcat friends must have jumped Tribe Fury."

"Knowing them they're trying to attack the tank." It was clear that Ebony's opinion of the tribe was extremely low, though in truth she held a grudging respect for them as fighters. "Good. They can distract each other, and make doubly sure that nobody notices anything. How much further until we reach this building that we're heading for?"

"We must be about there." Bray had remained quiet during the discussion about the Wildcats, but he seemed more inclined to speak now that the conversation had come back to more immediately practical matters. "There's a drain cover above us. That ought to be the one we want."

"And we'd better hope that there's nobody sitting up there using the bathroom," growled Pride, only half in jest. Lex smiled.

"Nobody uses bathrooms anymore in this city. Since the water pretty much stopped flowing they've turned into cesspools. Have you seen one lately?" Pride shook his head, and Lex smiled sardonically.

"You don't want to." He climbed up the ladder and gave the cover a hefty push. It lifted up quite easily, and he peered out cautiously through a small crack. Ebony swung up alongside him, and pushed the lid off the rest of the way.

"If there's anybody up here, they're going to see you anyway Lex. You might as well look like you mean business."

"Just leave security to me, Ebony." He climbed up, pushing her out of the way to ensure that he made it out of the drain first. "Looks pretty deserted."

"I'm not surprised." Looking pained, Ebony headed immediately for the bathroom door. "Let's get out of here. If every bathroom in the city stinks like this it's a wonder the whole city doesn't too."

"People probably carried on using them for longer than they should have done, that's all. I don't think there's any danger of catching anything." Pride followed her to the door, the speed of his movements showing that he was not nearly so nonchalant as his words might suggest. Bray was last up the ladder, but like Lex he showed no reaction to the hideous state of the place. Ebony had never seen the harsher side of life in the city, thanks to her relatively luxurious lifestyle amongst the Locos. Pride had barely got to know life in the city at all. Bray and Lex had both seen it all before.

"Where next?" Pride asked, as they went out into a dingy, tiled corridor beyond the bathroom. Bray led the way with only mild hesitation.

"I haven't been by this exact route before, but I know this building has a back door. It must be somewhere this way. Once we get to it, we head out into a back alley. If we keep flat against the wall, that sentry on the roof won't be able to see us."

"What about the other sentries on other buildings?" asked Lex. Bray shook his head.

"The nearest one is on the old bank I think. We should be okay for a while, anyway. It's a long alley and it'll take us most of the way to the warehouse. Then we cut across the back yard of that Catholic kindergarten with the old bell on the roof, and we're practically there."

"Pyro territory," muttered Ebony automatically. Bray shook his head.

"Not anymore."

"True. The Chosen wiped out the last of them, I heard." She smiled faintly, though not with any real relish. "Not that the Locos left many."

"Pyros?" asked Pride, who sometimes felt rather left behind when talk turned to old tribes he had never encountered. Lex felt much the same, but didn't like drawing attention to his lack of knowledge by asking such questions. Bray made a face.

"Pyromaniacs," he supplied, as though that bit hadn't been obvious. "And they meant it too. They'd set fire to anything. Half the burned out buildings in this sector and the next one were their work. Zoot decided to get rid of them after they destroyed his first headquarters, back before the last of the adults died. That was when the Pyro attacks were at their height. The city was mostly deserted, because of the evacuations, and because so many of the kids were away at the military camps in the hills."

"It wasn't pretty," recollected Ebony. "We lost two of the tribe, and Zoot was livid. He took out a war party the very next day. There was one hell of a fight. Bastards came after us with home made flame throwers."

"And two of the last adults left alive in the city got caught in the cross fire," added Bray, slowing to a halt as they reached the back door of the building. "They were policemen, or had been, and they came to stop the fight."

"You were there?" asked Lex, rather surprised to hear this. Bray nodded.

"I was still sort of a Loco myself then. I'd joined to try to keep an eye on Martin, but it wasn't working out. That battle confirmed it and I left the next morning. I saw two policemen doing their damnedest to defend their city, even though they were both nearly dead from the Virus. The kids just turned on them."

"It's our city now. They didn't have any right to it anymore." Ebony remembered the fight with no more relish than Bray, but she at least better understood the high feelings that had been in evidence that night. "I think we killed a lot of the Pyromaniacs as well. They didn't get any of us."

"We outnumbered them five to one," pointed out Bray. Ebony shrugged.

"Don't go looking for a fight that you don't have a fair chance of winning," she told him. "You never were much of a tactician."

"Which breaks my heart." He pushed open the door. "Don't forget to stay close to the wall. If he sees us he'll just shoot. Any stories we might try on a ground patrol don't matter to the roof sentries. They just open fire."

"I hate this city." Only half joking, Pride moved into the lead, taking the point as they headed into the alley. It was a grim place, as so many of them were now. Always repositories for rubbish, the thin, grimy alleys of the old world were festering, rat-filled places now, where disease was almost a visible threat. The stench was worse than back in the bathroom, although much of the dumped rubbish looked past the rotting stage now.

"I think this is officially the worst place I've been in since coming to this city." Pressed against a wall that was black and slimy to the touch. Pride set his teeth against his natural revulsion. "And that includes being trapped in the Mall when it looked like the Guardian was going to blow it up."

"It's just slime." Lex decided not to think too hard on how it might have formed, and just concentrated on staying out of sight. A strong smell of damp and unpleasantness rose from the slime as they disturbed it in passing, and any number of unidentifiable black objects squelched and burst under foot. A number of rats, bigger than any that might have dwelt in the city in the old days, came out to glare at the humans, and Lex whistled softly.

"You could put saddles and reins on those things."

"Well don't let them get too close. Rat bites can be horrible." Pride tried kicking something at the animals, but they didn't seem in the least perturbed. "I've noticed that there are more black rats around than there ever used to be. Best not to let any of them come near you."

"Black rats?" Lex, who had rarely bothered to go to school in his life, saw no problem with this. "Are they bigger or something?"

"No. They're plague carriers. The Black Death, remember? I don't know if it's still around much these days, or if every black rat in the world might be carrying it, but I do know that I don't want to catch it." Pride slowed as they reached a cross roads of sorts. "Which way?"

"Carry straight on." Bray was bringing up the rear, resisting the urge to go on ahead. He wasn't used to moving about with companions. "Keep going until the alley intersects with a normal road. You'll be able to see the kindergarten. It's a red brick building with a white roof, and a big cross built into the wall with white bricks."

"And it's pretty much the only building there that isn't burnt down," added Ebony, rather unimpressed with long and unnecessary descriptions. "And keep your voices down. Some of these walls are pretty thin, and they back onto a lot of buildings and other roads. We don't know who might be about."

"Lots of people with guns, knowing our luck." With Lex's final bitter comment, the little group lapsed into silence. Time ran into a blur, then, with no conversation to mark its passing. The alley stretched on in a long, straight line of decaying filth, and beyond that there was nothing. Nothing save the sky overhead, and the occasional glimpse of a distant building. The sun glinted on windows, and highlighted patches of graffiti; and black, jagged remnants of old fires began to loom into view. Gradually all sight of healthy buildings was gone, and the only view was of destruction. Shapeless walls, bereft of their caved-in roofs, stood like broken, blackened teeth against the skyline. It was like walking suddenly into a completely different city.

"You people thought up some pretty weird ways of entertaining yourselves after the Virus struck," commented Pride. Ebony glared at his back, stopping just short of sticking her tongue out - or more likely doing something infinitely more verbal, and considerably less polite.

"And I suppose out in the countryside you all just carried on being very calm and polite," she growled. He nodded.

"Pretty much. What's the point in fighting when we're all in the same boat? And setting fire to everything around you, destroying necessary shelters, and probably food and equipment stores in the process. What's the point in that? It's as if everybody went mad."

"They did." Bray was thinking of the fight that had been fought in this place; of watching his brother finally ceasing to be Martin, and becoming the finished, polished creation of his own twisted fantasy. The battered gangs of Pyromaniacs, with their home-made flame throwers; and two debilitated policemen desperate to make what they saw as nothing more than a band of tearaway kids stop their fighting and go home. None of them had had real homes anymore, and many hadn't in some time. They had already ceased to be the citizens of old.

"Sometimes I wonder if this city can ever have been a safe place to live." Pride pointed up ahead. "I take it that's the kindergarten?"

"That's the one." Bray came up alongside him, looking towards the building. It was a long time since he had been here, for he had always preferred approaching the secret warehouse by another route, and he had forgotten just how ruined this place was. Rubbish bins, long set slight, stood around like odd sculptures, amid a landscape filled with the blackened and the twisted. Burnt out cars were everywhere; an upturned postal van clung pointlessly to the last remnants of its red paint, whilst its melted tyres pointed up to the sky. Bricks scattered the street, and chunks of broken glass lay amongst melted splashes of the same substance. There were bodies there too, though these all four Mall Rats did their best not to see. A withered adult, only part skeletonised, collapsed across the body of someone much younger; a second adult, his policeman's uniform still recognisable, with the knife that had killed him still stuck in the middle of his back. Pride looked disgusted.

"I can't believe you people still defend this city. It's like something from a horror movie."

"I suppose you think we should let Tribe Fury take it all." Lex stepped out of the alley, crossing the scarred street. "Well sorry Pride. This is my city, and I don't give a damn how screwed up it is. Maybe every kid in the place is a psychopath, and maybe we're all going to end up killing each other. Maybe we were all sick in the head long before the Virus came. It doesn't matter. We still have to fight."

"Don't seem to have done much fighting yet." Following close behind him, Ebony gazed about at the scene of her first great battle. That had been about fires and screaming, and death and injury, not hunting for food and scavenged stores, and trying never to be seen by the enemy. She hopped over the white stone wall of the kindergarten and took the lead as they passed the old building. There was no graffiti, which seemed odd in a world where every tribe decorated their lair. Even the plants in the garden had been left alone, and a strangely unvandalised slide and see-saw stood in a peculiarly colourful splendour on either side of a bright yellow hopscotch grid. Lex couldn't resist a quick trip down the slide, and Bray threw down his skateboard and zoomed past them all, apparently affected by the same spirit of sudden carelessness. This splash of untouched colour in the middle of the devastation affected them all, and even Pride seemed to relax a little. They crossed the yard in a strung out group, Bray skating ahead, the others wandering behind to look in through the windows, and admire the collection of plants. A football lay against the red brick building, and Lex started to kick it idly along as he walked. Pride tried to tackle him, and Ebony rolled her eyes. What was it about a ball that could turn two usually cautious professionals into duelling children? She chose to ignore them, and hurried off after Bray instead, watching as he reached the gate that led out of the yard. She could see part of the building that they were aiming for now; a monstrosity of corrugated iron and breeze blocks, smoke stained but otherwise mostly undamaged. Part of the ceiling had been caved in by a fire bomb a long time ago, but the stores had remained safe enough, hidden in a cellar that few people knew about and even less had ever bothered to raid. It had been a long time since she had been inside it, and she wondered what might be there. Not that there was much that she needed, though the means with which to make a few weapons might be nice.

"Hurry up!" Turning around slightly as he freewheeled through the gate, Bray gestured for the others to come after him. He was feeling exposed again, the odd feeling of security that came from the undamaged school yard evaporating as he left its confines. The streets on this side of the kindergarten bore no signs of the battle that had once taken place here, though there were still burnt buildings aplenty. He started to gather speed as the road sloped gently downwards, and he turned his back on the three stragglers behind him. Lex and Pride were still squabbling over the ball, acting like children allowed outside to play after a particularly long period of rain. If they had been anybody else Bray might have gone to join them, but he had never been on the best of terms with either boy, and therefore concentrated merely on the building up ahead. The list of items that they needed floated through his head; a barrel, some rafters, baby things. If they found everything, and set off back to the Mall with their hands full, maybe Lex would forget about getting an identity card as well. He imagined arriving back with stores enough to supply Brady for weeks; with all the materials that Jack needed to ensure that they could remain self sufficient; with extra food stores as well perhaps. It was a nice thought, and one that occupied his mind enough to prevent him from seeing the silhouette that flitted briefly between buildings a little further down the empty street.

Ebony was still watching him skate, wondering if it was something that she should take up. She had never needed to adopt the skateboards and roller-blades that so many other tribes had used for transportation, for the Locos had always had a car for her to get around in. She hadn't skated since the days at the rink before the Virus, when she and Bray had gone together on Friday and Saturday nights. It might be nice to take it up again now though, even if it was unsafe on most streets nowadays. Bray looked faintly heroic, to her eyes at least, as he freewheeled along the road, and she would like to strike such a pose herself. Standing tall, wind in her hair, looking as cool as he did now. She smiled, and let her usual focus drift as she thought back to the last time she had worn roller-skates - and with her mind elsewhere failed to notice the black clad figure rising into view between two buildings. She didn't notice him until Lex shouted, and made her jump.

The shot was shockingly loud, even though it came from some distance away. A single shot, from a high powered rifle, wielded by a blond-haired figure dressed in an all too familiar uniform. Bray fell backwards from the skateboard as though jerked by an unseen string, landing hard on the heat scorched tarmac. He didn't move, and his skateboard rolled to a halt some feet away. Ebony gaped.

"Bray?" It was a hopeless attempt to speak to him, for the word was barely audible even to herself. Lex and Pride ran up, standing beside her in silent shock. None of them moved any closer to the motionless figure on the road. They didn't want to see what had happened, and they didn't want to know if that single shot had been fatal. The blond figure in his stiff black uniform had no such reservations however, and was already coming out from under cover. He didn't so much as glance at the three other Mall Rats, no doubt trusting in his rifle to prevent them from coming any closer. Lex's fists clenched and unclenched with vicious force, but he held back. A rifle like that could drop him from an impressive distance, and if the aim was good enough it would all be over. He wanted to move though; wanted to run towards the proud, preening figure stalking closer to Bray. He was angry with himself when he didn't take even a step.

Up ahead, the skateboard skittered away under the force of an impatient kick as the figure prowled closer to his victim. He was about eighteen, with blond, wavy hair that touched his shoulders, and sparkling black eyes that regarded the sprawled and immobile Bray with something close to genuine affection. Towering above the downed Mall Rat, tall and self-confident, he let his eyes carry the barest hint of mockery and humour. Bray still hadn't moved. He didn't move now.

"You can stop shamming," the figure said, in a soft and modulated voice. "I aimed for the skateboard, not you." Bray's eyes flickered open.

"I'm not shamming." He still didn't move his body; only his eyes and his mouth seemed able to move at all.

"You were hurt?" The concern in the warm voice was entirely false, and Bray knew it. He glared up, letting the pain in his back and his head ebb gently away before trying anything more energetic.

"You try getting knocked backwards like that." He thought about trying to lure the gleaming blond figure closer, so that he might be able to do something to disarm him, but somehow he was sure that such a ploy would be useless. Slowly he turned his head, seeing Lex, Ebony and Pride still standing in the yard behind the kindergarten. They saw him move, and some of the shock seemed to fade from their faces, but they were still too far away to be of any use to him. The blond-framed head above him cracked into a delightful smile.

"I could get rid of them."

"Leave them alone." Moving very cautiously, and extremely mindful of the gun as well as his own possible injuries, Bray sat up. His head protested, but he didn't rub it, or check for blood. He kept his hands where they were. "Are you alone?"

"Who knows? That's not the sort of thing I'm going to tell you without good reason." His captor's smile didn't seem to waver as he spoke, and if it changed at all it was only to grow bigger, warmer, more charming. "It's good to see you again, Bray."

"I can't say that it's mutual." He frowned, feigning trouble in remembering. "Racka was it? Rochester?"

"Racha. Brigadier Racha as it happens, but I don't think we need to let a little thing like rank come between friends. Get up."

"Friends?" Bray stood up slowly, glad to discover that it didn't hurt very much. He had hit his head hard on the tarmac, but clearly there was no real damage done. "We've only met the once, and I wouldn't say that it was especially friendly."

"I know. I feel really bad about that." Racha fluttered his eyelashes mockingly, then shouldered his rifle. "But that was then. This is now. Why go on harbouring grudges?"

"I don't know. Maybe because you've enslaved my city and tried to kill me twice now?" It was hard not to be angry with a person who refused to behave like a proper enemy. Racha merely smiled on, ever warm, ever flirtatious.

"I didn't just try to kill you. But who's counting? Now call your friends over. We might as well be introduced properly."

"I doubt they want to meet you." Relaxing slightly now that the gun was no longer pointed at him, Bray stole a quick glance at the others. He didn't like taking his eyes from Racha even for that short a time, and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled all the while. Lex had taken a few steps forward, he realised, and now that the gun seemed to be no longer a threat he came onwards much more readily, the others at his heels. Racha beamed in welcome, leaving the gun resting casually on his shoulder.

"Hello," he offered, in a typically warm and pleasant fashion. Lex ignored him and addressed Bray.

"What's going on? Who is this guy?"

"Racha," announced the man himself, still sparkling at everybody and everything. His heels clicked together smartly. "Brigadier Racha. Second in command of Tribe Fury, and very pleased to meet all of you." His eyes drifted coolly up and down Lex's athletic frame, and his smile grew. "And you are?"

"Very cautious," snapped back Lex. "Bray, what is this? Did he not mean to shoot at you? Can we trust this guy?"

"Of course you can trust me. I didn't kill him, did I." Racha slapped the stock of his rifle. "I could have killed all of you. I could have radioed my unit and brought ten men in to round you up or wipe you out, but I didn't. So enough with the hostility."

"Hostility?" Ebony took a step towards him, though she took care not to move too close. "You're the guy who brought Bray back to the city. You were just about to kill him when I got in the way."

"Oh yes." He turned his smile on to her, eyes gleaming with all their merry flirtation. "I thought I'd seen you before. But that was different, wasn't it. All those people, the rest of my unit. I couldn't very well let him go in front of witnesses, could I."

"Well it's nice to know you'd have been blowing the back of my head off unwillingly." Bray eyed the gun cautiously, wondering what exactly would happen if the four of them tried to take it away. Racha would surely have no chance against all of them? And yet somehow he couldn't quite convince himself enough to try. Racha just smiled.

"So what was it that you wanted?" asked Pride, when it seemed that nobody else knew what to say. His voice was the kind that demanded an answer, and his eyes showed that he cared nothing for Racha's sparkles and smiles. The blond brigadier eyed him thoughtfully for a moment, then glanced over at Bray.

"I was hoping I'd run into you," he said, although by then his gaze had drifted back to the group in general, and it was unclear exactly whom he meant. "You remember Lisa?"

"No," answered Bray, deciding that it must have been him at whom the question had been directed. Racha frowned, then nodded.

"You were never introduced," he said, as though in realisation. "She was the medic in my unit when we first met."

"You left her with Amber." Something sparked into life in Bray's eyes, and he felt his stomach lurch. "What happened?"

"She came back to the city," was the rather off-hand reply. "Lisa, not your girlfriend. She told me that your girl was dead." He frowned, apparently taken by surprise by the blank, closed look that had taken over Bray's face. The idea of grief had clearly not struck him. "Then yesterday I had a word with one of the kids I'd sent up to look after her," he continued, still rather oblivious to everything save his news. Lex glared at him, but the unspoken demand to shut up went as unnoticed as Bray's inner turmoil. "Turns out she didn't die at all, or at least not then. They just got restless and deserted their post." He frowned again, once more rather surprised by the effect that his words were having. Bray was staring at him now, fists clenched, and had the clear look of someone considering violence. Racha's fingers tapped rhythmically and meaningfully on the stock of his rifle.

"I sent some more people up there straight away." He still spoke without hurry or emotion, though now he used rather more force. "She wasn't there. Apparently there were two sets of footprints leading away from the place, but the trail went cold so they couldn't follow." He smiled innocuously, and raised his eyebrows. "I don't know where she's gone, but it looked like she survived. There wasn't any disturbed earth, as though there had been any burials recently. So you can draw your own conclusions."

"Why are telling me this?" Bray's voice sounded thick, and his eyes were strangely masked. Racha shrugged.

"I thought you deserved to know. I'm no fool, Bray. I know you people are out here. Independents you call yourselves. You think nobody sees any of you? Well I've been keeping my eyes open, and my ears, and there's been plenty to hear from the tribes who have surrendered to us. A few questions to the right people, and I had a rough idea of where to start looking for you. Back then I thought I'd be delivering the news that she was dead. Now you get to have the updated report instead."

"You tracked us down, you claim to know about us, you've been asking questions?" Ebony was capable of a very great deal of suspicion, and she turned it all onto Racha. "What do you want? Is there a squad of your little friends waiting for us round the corner?"

"No." Racha favoured her with one of his most delightful smiles, though she remained unimpressed. "Listen, I don't care about getting the whole of the city in our thrall. That's Silver's kick, not mine. He wants to rule the world, and have every kid on the planet gazing at him adoringly. Me, I prefer a challenge. I like having you Independents out here, fighting us and hiding from us. If you people want to stay living the way you are, that's fine by me."

"There's a catch," pronounced Ebony. Pride had already turned away in disgust. There was something humiliating about a foe who thought that their attempts at resistance were entertaining. Racha shrugged.

"Catch? What could be the catch? You get to run around out here to your heart's content, struggling to survive, not having enough food... but I won't do anything to stop you. I can't speak for my colleagues of course. In return..."

"There's always something," muttered Ebony. Lex folded his arms.

"In return we let you walk out of here alive," he announced, determined to exert a little authority. Racha beamed at him.

"I've been training with this gun for six years," he said, brightly and matter-of-factly. "I've been careful to keep just enough distance between us. So you make a move, friend, and you're dead." Lex looked furious, and Racha shrugged at him. "But hey, no hard feelings, right? All's fair in love and war."

"This isn't war," muttered Lex, from between clenched teeth. "I don't know what the hell it is, but it isn't war."

"Oh but it is." Racha had a different light in his eyes now, as though the playtime was over for the time being. "It's the biggest war you've ever fought, friend. We've got this city, and sooner or later every Independent in it will be dead or captured. It's inevitable. So here's the trick. You defeat us, and run us out of this city, or you all die. There's nothing I can do to stop that."

"You want us to defeat you?" Bray wasn't sure quite what they were hearing. Racha raised an eyebrow.

"Want you to defeat us? Why would I want that? No Bray. I want you to try. I want a proper battle, not these stupid scuffles with people who surrender too easily. I want a challenge, and you people, and all the other Independents who have some real life about them, are the ones who are going to give it to me."

"You're insane," announced Pride, still clearly disgusted with the situation. Racha's eyes hardened.

"Maybe," he countered, the warmth still in his voice. "But unless you're willing to surrender, or unless you're going to commit suicide by trying to get out of the city, you've got no choice but to fight back, in your little ways. No choice at all." He took his gun from his shoulder in a smart, snappy movement, and in an instant had them all held at bay. "So back to that 'in return'."

"Which is what exactly." Keeping as much of a jeer in his voice as he could, Lex showed off a fine display of angry glaring. Racha just seemed amused, as he had all along.

"Once a week one of you comes here. I don't care which one, but starting today, at this time every week, I want to see someone. I'm not expecting reports. I don't want you to betray your friends and neighbours. That isn't important. What I want is to know that you're still here. That you haven't tried to leave the city."

"And what's to stop us from running out just after we've been to see you?" asked Ebony. "It would be a week before you got wise. We could be miles away."

"More likely you'd be dead for trying to get past the troops we have encircling the city." Racha cocked his head on one side, regarding the silently sulking Pride with an air of interest. "But if you want to try running, let's just be clear about one thing. I'm not like my colleagues. They rely on random sweeps to try to find the Independents. Sometimes they succeed, usually they don't. Me, I have a different strategy. I ask questions, I talk to the prisoners. I know where most of you are. I know who you are. If none of you turns up for our weekly meeting here, people are going to die. All over the city, Independents are going to be getting visits from people with guns - and most of the time we don't bother to take that kind - your kind - into custody. We just go in shooting, and we don't leave any survivors. Do you want that on your consciences?"

"No." Almost as if he was worried that one of the others would give a different answer, Pride spoke up again. "No. We're staying. And one of us will be here every week."

"We will?" Lex was not pleased with the idea, but Pride shot him a look that spoke volumes.

"Lex, if it had been up to me we wouldn't still be in this damn city. But we are, and now we have responsibilities. We're not getting anybody killed."

"Good." Racha took a step away from them. "Till next week then. Have a good one." His gun moved around to point at each of them in turn. "Don't try anything. Rather spoil all the fun if I had to shoot you now, wouldn't it."

"Yeah. Mustn't spoil the fun." Sarcasm dripping from her voice, Ebony muttered her impotent riposte. Racha merely grinned and was gone. The others stared after him, watching as he disappeared off amongst the buildings, then turned to face each other in despondency.

"What the hell was that all about?" Turning away, Lex paced up and down in obvious agitation. "Who is that guy?"

"Don't ask me. He's just the guy that captured me up in the hills a week ago." Bray turned to look at the point where Racha had disappeared from view. He had clearly departed completely, and was probably already well on his way back to the hotel. "I think he's... touched. He doesn't seem to have emotions like normal people."

"Oh he's a headcase alright." Lex kicked at stray stones on the ground. "Damn it! We thought we were being so clever! So what is all this. Is it over? Do we give up trying to fight back? I mean, if Tribe Fury really knows all about us--"

"Tribe Fury doesn't know all about us. One of them does." Pride tore his own eyes away from the buildings where they had had their last glimpse of the possibly insane Racha. "He's playing games with us, and we have to play as well. Now let's forget about him and see about those supplies that we came for. Best deal with the things we can handle before we worry about the things we can't."

"Yeah. You're right." Bray picked up his skateboard, eyeing without enthusiasm the deep scar caused by Racha's bullet. "The entrance is this way." He started to head for what looked like an old post office, abandoned at least twenty years before in favour of a more modern one some distance away. The others followed, through the door, past the old post master's desk, and down a short flight of steps. They were in an extension then, built hastily for some reason now lost to time; a place of breeze blocks and corrugated iron that didn't fit at all with the style of the building to which it had been attached. The extension was mostly empty, save for sections of corrugated sheeting from the roof, now lying on the floor, blackened and caved in by an early Pyro attack. Glass from the broken windows was scattered about the place, in a familiar pattern of vandalism and destruction, and the legend Demon Dogz Rule! screamed itself from one wall in a riot of pink and orange paint. Another flight of steps led downwards from the middle of the floor, surrounded by the sort of temporary barrier put up by construction workers. It was light and made of plastic, and striped in red and white, and quite how it had managed to remain standing was a mystery. Lex looked about.

"Nice place. How did you find it?"

"We were locked up here once." Ebony flashed a smile at Bray that spoke of old camaraderie, and old friendships that went back much further than their recent enmity. "That was a mad night."

"Yeah." Bray smiled faintly, the first time he had done so in some while. "Come on." He started off down the stairs without elaborating upon the story, and Ebony seemed to have no indication of doing so either. She followed on behind him, and Lex and Pride, exchanging a look, took up the rear. It wasn't a long flight of stairs, and it led down into a room approximately twice the size of the one above.

"Why would a post office need a cellar like this?" asked Lex. Bray pulled a flashlight from his bag, and shone it around. It didn't do a great deal to illuminate the darkness of an underground, windowless room, but it was better than nothing.

"Not a post office," he answered, sweeping the floor with the beam of light from his torch. "Not anymore. The last few years it was used by the education authority. They used to store files here, but I suppose the Demon Dogs must have junked them."

"Which has to be a good thing if it was school reports that they kept down here." Lex thought about a few of his, from the days when he had still bothered to attend school, and wondered what had happened to all of those files. A nice big fire, hopefully. Beside him Pride was pulling out his own torch, flashing it around at the walls. Piles of assorted junk showed up in the light; a ladder, rows of paint in spray cans, a handful of televisions lined up in case they ever proved to be useful again. Further on there were metal barrels and wooden fence posts; a roll of barbed wire and a pile of traffic cones. Pride made a beeline for a metal barrel.

"That's one thing off the list." He seemed to have become all business since the encounter with Racha, and nobody was really inclined to distract him from his singular path. They all wanted to get back to the Mall now. "What's next?"

"Baby stuff." Bray's voice came from some distance away, where his torch-light was bobbing along beside a metal shelving unit filled with cans of dried milk formula, packets of baby wipes and bottles of skin lotion. For want of a proper list he packed as much stuff as possible into his bag, trying not to distract himself too much with thoughts of his own baby. He had no idea whether or not to believe what Racha had said. What reason had he had to lie? Yet on the other hand, why would he really seek Bray out to pass on such news? If it was true, Bray wondered where she had gone; how she was, and who she was with. None of his thoughts made him feel much better, so he was concentrating now on nothing but his responsibilities to Brady. It was a good deal easier than the alternative.

"We're not going to find any suitable wood in here," observed Lex. Pride nodded.

"We should forget about that for now. It'll be hard enough to get this barrel back to the Mall. Remember how hard it was to get here."

"It might be possible if we're careful." Bray rejoined them, doing up the straps of his bag as he came. It was bulging with supplies. "The Wildcats might have got rid of that bunch we had to sneak past earlier."

"Do we ever get that lucky?" wondered Lex. Ebony shrugged, leading the way back up the stairs.

"Stranger things have happened. Anyway, let's just get out of here. It's too hard to hear what's happening up above."

Nobody was inclined to argue with her, and it was a despondent straggle of Mall Rats that left the old warehouse, none of them clear quite what to do next. The early optimism that they had shared, about finding all that they needed and getting it safely back home, had been badly shaken by Racha's claims that they could not hope to traverse the city unseen. Tribe Fury themselves might not see them - or would certainly have attacked them - but there were others. Independents, perhaps, who would sell information to avoid death on discovery, passing tales to someone like Racha who, as he had told them, was prepared to listen to prisoners. The number of places in which a possible spy might be hiding seemed suddenly to multiply, and the dark, desolate buildings no longer appeared likely to be empty. Pride set the metal barrel down in the entrance to the old post office and looked around.

"So what do we do now?" he asked. Lex shrugged.

"Jack needs that wood, or something else that he can build the framework of his windmill out of," he pointed out. Pride gestured at the barrel.

"I thought we'd agreed we have enough of a task ahead of us getting this back unseen. I can't believe we thought this would be so easy."

"It might still be." Ebony was looking towards Bray. "There is another way, remember. The route we used to sneak up on the Pyros when we attacked them that night."

"It opens out at the Locos' old headquarters," answered Bray. "That's just a little out of our way."

"Actually it has more than one exit. We developed it a lot after you left us." She smiled at him, in so sparkly and warm a fashion that he was reminded inescapably of Racha - and of the fact that Ebony was probably no less dangerous. "We did used to fight quite a lot you know. It was one of things we were best at. Zoot closed it down once the Demon Dogs seemed to get wise to too much of it, but it's still there if you know where to look."

"What is this other route?" Lex was taking charge again, playing the security chief in his usual, bull-headed way. Ebony looked almost as though she was considering not answering him.

"If you're going to tell me it's a secret..." he spat at last, and his eyes switched over to Bray. "Just for Locos and their oldest friends, is it?"

"Lex..." Bray could always be counted on to react badly to Lex's needling, just as Lex would always respond similarly to ill-chosen words from Bray, and time and tentative friendship had done nothing to change that. Pride rolled his eyes.

"Oh we've got every chance of defeating Tribe Fury, haven't we. What's wrong with you two? You worked together to fight the Chosen - so just grow up now."

"Yeah, okay." Looking just abashed enough to show that he was genuinely apologetic, without quite ruling out another flash of temper in the near future, Lex managed to wipe away the worst of his frown. "So what is this other route?"

"A tunnel." Ebony enjoyed having information that he was not a party to, and was happy to milk the moment even if their situation was likely to be increasingly precarious. "Most cities have them; drainage tunnels, underground railways and their service tunnels; rivers re-routed underground. You could get anywhere you wanted to, years ago, if you knew what you were doing. A lot of them got blocked up later - natural subsidence, or the adults thinking they were dangerous after a few accidents in the old days. Zoot found some of them, and we opened up a whole lot more."

"Quite the underground network," commented Bray. "Until the Demon Dogs starting sabotaging them."

"You heard about that?" Ebony looked gently reflective for a moment, then shrugged. "There were one or two explosions, but then things often blew up when the Demon Dogs were involved. And besides, they never blew up anybody important."

"They were crazy days," commented Lex, who had always been rather sorry that he had missed out on those early times, due to his removal to one of the military style training camps in the foothills. From what he had heard it had been pure chaos and mayhem, and an era, no matter how brief, of utter insanity. A few terrified adults, dying unnoticed in a world full of children fighting to the death in the gutter. Hardly paradise, but a fascinating challenge.

"Yet again I'm gutted I was out in the countryside." Pride would never understand Lex's love of all things violent and urban, just as Lex would never understand the attraction of life in some peaceful rural backwater. "If we're going for this tunnel, let's just go for it. I don't want to be out here any longer."

"Whatever you say, honey." Ebony looked both ways along the street, then struck off back towards the kindergarten. This time they did not linger in the strangely relaxing yard, but pressed on, past the withered corpses, and on down a short, almost painfully thin alley. It proved to be a dead end, but there was a grating set into the end wall, which was clearly part of a drain. It was not possible for two of them to take hold of the grille at once, but Ebony was strong enough to tug it free. Lex looked doubtful.

"You used this to make an attack on another tribe?" he asked. "It's hardly wide enough for one person, and with weapons as well you're looking at a serious disadvantage."

"Not when you can move quietly, and when you know your enemy is well distracted." Ebony cast a look back at Bray. "Even when you have somebody tagging along who's trying to give the game away. They didn't see us coming."

"You got lucky," opined Lex, who liked having the last word. She grinned suggestively back up at him.

"They're dead, we won," she told him, rather unarguably. "Now come on."

The tunnel, like any other, was a cold, slightly damp place, with occasional cobwebs dangling from the ceiling and a smell of stale air. It was wide enough for two to walk abreast, and Ebony and Bray fell into a natural lead. The place was dark, but with two torches in the party there was light enough to see by. The beams of light showed the moist walls and wet, muddy floor of the tunnel, but there was not a lot else to see.

"Storm drain?" asked Lex. Ebony shrugged.

"Don't know. Maybe. It's not a sewer, so it could be." She stopped abruptly, by what seemed to be a roughly made hole. "This way."

"Where is this old headquarters that you used to have?" Lex was quite excited by this idea of secret tunnels and night time raids on lethal enemies, and his excitement showed in contrast to the recent seriousness of all the group. Bray glanced back at him, momentarily dazzled by the torch that Lex was carrying.

"School basement," he said, rather shortly since it was a period of his life that he had no desire to remember. "A private one, that got closed down as soon as things started to get crazy."

"It had a mad old caretaker who thought Zoot was the Second Coming." Ebony laughed at the memory, before turning her back on all of them to climb through the hole. "Can you manage with that barrel, Pride?"

"Let me worry about the barrel. You just get us back to Mall." The idle conversation bothered him, although he wasn't entirely sure why. Certainly it made him feel that he was the only one of them taking this seriously; and the only one who was an outsider, not originally from the city.

"All work and no play, Pride." Ebony shook her head sadly. "I never thought that you'd turn out to be a dull boy."

"Just shut up and lead the way." His patience, usually limitless, was failing fast. The events of the day had come together to disturb him greatly, and he was as worried as was Bray about Amber. He wanted to know whose had been the second set of footprints supposedly seen leading away from the barn. He wanted to know how far Racha had been telling the truth. Most of all he just didn't want to be here now.

"Take it easy everybody. We're pretty close to the surface, and you never know who might be able to hear us." Bray was looking uneasy, flashing his torch about in sudden darts. Lex had to laugh.

"What's the matter? Seeing rats?"

"No. At least, not the little kind." He came to a dead halt, and Pride crashed into him, almost dropping the barrel. "I can hear something. Can't you?"

"Just you lot sharing reminiscences." Pride renewed his grip on the barrel. "Watch where you're going."

"Oh shut up." Ebony quickened her pace. "There's nobody down here except ghosts; but there might be people up above, so stop arguing." She slowed, and gestured to another grille. "This way now."

They tugged down the grille and emerged into a drier, wider tunnel with a definite air current. Ebony seemingly had no need to get her bearings, or think about where they were, but led the way unhesitatingly. Bray was starting to trail behind now, falling even behind Pride and his unwieldy burden.

"This place is fantastic." Rather sorry that he had never known about it before, Lex pulled slightly into the lead. "It's really all old tunnels?"

"Old engineering stuff. They've mostly been here as long as the city, and most were forgotten about long before your parents were born." She gestured off down a side tunnel. "That way is the town centre, and a few yards down there's another siding that'll eventually take you to the beach. That way is blocked though. A couple of kids drowned there back in the seventies."

"You know, I think Bray's right." Still annoyed at this careless chatter about tunnels, Pride slowed his step and set down the barrel. "I think I can hear something."

"What?" Lex also stopped, turning around and flashing his torch back at the other two. They both flinched involuntarily.

"I don't know what." Pride was trying to listen, but could hear nothing now. "I thought I heard footsteps."

"I didn't hear anything." Ebony listened carefully nonetheless, then shook her head. "This place has strange acoustics. You can hear all kinds of things. It doesn't mean anything."

"Maybe." Pride picked up the barrel again, but he could see that Bray wasn't convinced.

"Who'd be down here?" asked Lex, in an attempt to get things moving again. "Nobody knows about this place, right?"

"Somebody might." Bray caught them up as they went on again, slowing when Ebony headed for another turning. "Maybe we should head for the surface. You're not the only Loco left, Ebony. Any number are still out there somewhere, and you know what they're like. They won't have surrendered to Tribe Fury."

"True... but they're also my friends, and we don't have to worry about what they might do. Well, you might, admittedly. Besides, it's not likely that they're down here. The Demon Dogs either. They're not tunnel rats. Using them is one thing, but living in them? Don't be so jumpy, Bray. Honestly, one mention of what might have happened to Amber, and your boyfriend has got you and Pride acting like a couple of scared little kids."

"Maybe." Pride cast a sidelong glance at Bray, feeling a little guilty about being so obvious in his concern for Amber. He had thought that he had adjusted to having lost her to Bray, but perhaps the truth was something rather more complicated. Bray wasn't looking at him though, and didn't seem unduly concerned by Ebony's insinuation.

"Watch your heads," she told them, as they continued on after her, though she made no effort to make sure that they had heard. Being very much smaller than the others it was easy for her to step through the low entrance to the next tunnel, and she disappeared abruptly into inky blackness. Lex followed quickly, catching his elbows on a jagged wall. The floor sloped downwards, and his surprised feet nearly cost him his balance. He waved the torch around.

"What the hell happened here? Some kind of cave in?" His torch was showing tumbled stone and other assorted rubble, and it made the going treacherous. Ebony shook her head.

"Bomb," she said, rather too coolly. "Demon Dogs."

"The sabotage crew, huh." He whistled through his teeth. "I wouldn't like to be trapped down here with bombs going off. Imagine being caught up in a roof fall."

"By the look of things there are plenty of people to ask if you want to know what it's like."

"Huh?" Lex followed the direction of Pride's gaze, beginning to get an unpleasant idea about just what his companion had meant. On the ground, sticking out of the rubble, were several battered limbs. He saw a hand, dried but well preserved in the measured air of the tunnels; two booted feet; a leg clothed in torn jeans plastered in long dried blood. He swallowed, and searched for a suitably dark joke that never came.

"Your friends?" asked Pride. Ebony shrugged.

"Maybe. Kind of hard to tell."

"You left them here?" Bray stared around, hoping that he wouldn't recognise anything of what he could see. Ebony nodded.

"What else were we going to do? We take this rubble out of the way, and the whole place could cave in. Besides, they're buried aren't they? Well, most of them."

"I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer." Bray shook his head. "You were right about there being ghosts down here."

"Yeah, well I don't think they're the malevolent type." She began picking her way carefully through the fallen bricks and stones. "Mind where you step. I don't want to bring any more of the ceiling down."

"I think it's fair to say that none of us does." With some difficulty, Pride lugged the barrel past the many partial blockages. "How much further?"

"Quite some way. It's not exactly a direct route, but we'll come out near that old shoe store just past the Mall. Always supposing the tunnels are still open, anyway. Here, watch your feet around this bit. There are access points to another level of tunnels underneath us, and if you fall through you'll break something painful. I'm not carrying any of you out of here."

"Well that goes double in return." Pride hesitated. "Lex, shine that torch up ahead, could you?"

"Ahead? There's nothing up there." Lex had seen nothing to attract his own attention, but this time it seemed that Ebony had also heard the noise. She was staring ahead, and as they all did the same, she reached out for Bray's arm and lifted it so that the torch-light shone right the way along the length of the tunnel. A shadow flitted away, pale and indistinct, but most definitely human. Pride set down the barrel once again.

"Now tell me we're imagining things," he demanded. Lex turned slowly around, casting the torch beam back down the tunnel to catch another elongated figure slip just out of sight behind the group.

"We're hemmed in," said Ebony softly. Lex looked capable of murder, furious with himself for not having noticed anything earlier on.

"Not necessarily. There might be just the two of them." He handed back Pride's torch, and clenched his fists in readiness, raising his voice to be sure that it would be heard. "If they want to get in our way, they're welcome to try. I think we can show them a thing or two."

"Listen." Bray had moved slightly ahead, and was standing motionless now, turned to a dark black silhouette by the glow of his torch. "It sounds like chanting."

"Chanting?" Lex went to join him, hearing something that certainly did seem to be rhythmical whispering, like several voices muttering quietly in unison. "Some kind of cult? Your Pyro friends? Demon Dogs gone religious?"

"I don't know." Bray was looking around, trying to decide whether or not he had been this way before, and if so, what the layout was like. "We should get out of here."

"We've only seen two of them." Lex did not like to run away, whatever the circumstances, though he was willing to admit that the chanting was eerie. "How bad can it be? It isn't Tribe Fury, we know that much."

"Whoever it is, they're coming closer." Pride was speaking the truth, for as the rhythmic chants ceased, a new sound came to take their place; footsteps. They came from up ahead; soft but firm, regular and quick.

"Back the way we came," snapped Ebony, suddenly not anxious to meet these invisible menaces. She went at a jog, leading the way, but froze at a slight bend in the tunnel. More footsteps came from beyond it, coming towards them just as inexorably. "Any ideas?"

"We'll just have to fight our way through." Lex moved up to take the lead, though he made no attempt to move around that awkward corner. "There can't be that many of them, and nobody messes with--" But he got no further. With the dull click as of a switch being thrown, a bright, hot light flooded the tunnel, stealing the gleam of the two torches and blinding all four Mall Rats with its angry glare. Pride yelled in a sort of fury, and flung up one arm to protect his eyes, only to feel it grabbed by an unseen attacker. He spun around, lashing out with his second fist, but again found it caught and pinioned. Beside him Lex was bellowing in a rage, struggling against the hands that had caught him, cursing the light that had robbed him of his eyes.

"What the hell-?" Ebony thought that she had got in a good blow, but it seemed to have made no real difference to anything. Her fist hurt from the blow, but she had heard no corresponding gasp of pain from anywhere else. Beside her a heavy thump told her that Bray was using his skateboard as a weapon, then abruptly that noise ceased. She heard a punch being delivered, but somehow she didn't think that it was one of her friends who had landed the blow. Despite her blind struggles her own arms were soon held, and she let herself relax. Zoot had taught her how to fight, and when to give up and rest. There was a lot of sense in that kind of strategy.

"Well well well." It was a haughty, mocking voice, but not one that she thought she recognised. "What have we here? Four little Mall Rats perhaps? And brothers, look at this. We have royalty with us today. Bray, brother of the great Zoot, has come amongst us once again. Foolhardy, when you consider what sentence was passed against him the last time that happened."

"Huh?" Suspicions were forming in Bray's mind, but everything was too much of a blur for him to work it all out properly. "Who are you?"

"Who are we? You'd think he'd remember, wouldn't you brothers." The dull clank of a thrown switch sounded out again, and the agonising, bright light was gone. Painful shapes swam in Bray's eyes, and he tried to focus on something beyond them. It was hopeless, for even if his eyes had been working properly the darkness was complete. He wondered what had happened to his torch.

"What's going on? If you're Independents then we're all on the same side. You should let us pass." Pride, like Ebony, had given up struggling, though his muscles were still rigidly tense. He heard a low chuckle.

"We'll see about that. Maybe we'll let you go. More likely you'll never see daylight again." The voice carried the self assurance of true conviction, with perhaps just a little insanity beyond. "But it's not up to us. It's up to our leader." Somewhere up ahead the soft glow of a candle sputtered into life. "You can plead your case with him, but don't expect any mercy. It's not his style." The candle drifted closer.

"What is this?" As forcefully as she could, Ebony voiced a question that she felt sure was about to be answered. The invisible spokesman laughed very softly, and as the candle came nearer she saw him, vaguely, for the first time. He was tall and heavily built, and his close cropped hair was dyed the same shade of blue as his heavy, loose robe. He was smiling, though not with humour or warmth. Around him his fellows faded slightly into vision; an indeterminate amount, all of them in blue robes, holding the dishevelled Mall Rats captive. Lex cursed, Pride muttered something uncharacteristically rude, and very similar to the epithet on Ebony's own lips. Only Bray remained silent. With the identity of their captors now revealed, the only question remaining was that of the shape behind the candle, but that too was a question that seemed unlikely to last any longer. In only a moment the hovering yellow glow swung up in front of the tangle of captives, and the figure holding it was visible to all of them. Tall, aristocratic, proud. Nineteen perhaps, and certainly one of the oldest people left in the world, he had long, tightly curled blond hair, self-possessed, almost vain eyes, and a very unpleasant smile. Only now did Bray speak, and his voice was a snarl of pure hate.

"The Guardian."

"Yes." The voice was contemplative, amused, vainglorious. "The Guardian. And you, Bray, and your little friends here, have wandered into my domain." The smile grew wider, flickering slightly in and out of vision as the candle flame danced. "You're mine now, and I can do whatever I want with you all."

Chapter Text

The time seemed to pass very slowly, not only for Tai-San but for all of the tribe. They were restless and anxious, wanting the others to return, worried that they might not. Trudy played listlessly with Brady, and KC and Chloe argued noisily. Usually Tai-San would have meditated, both to calm her own mind and to send positive energy to Lex, but she found herself unable to concentrate. She sat alone in her room before a candle, trying to find a quiet place inside herself, but for the first time in a long while that quiet place did not seem to be there. She opened her eyes and listened to the increasingly bitter arguments; listened to the quiet sound of Trudy singing a half-remembered lullaby; listened out for Lex's return. There was nothing. She closed her eyes again and relived their all-too public farewell.

The hours wore on. Jack broke up the fight between KC and Chloe, taking KC away to help with his work. He was planning new sets of alarms; silent ones this time; and KC's quick mind was always a help to him. The boy was sullen though, still upset that he hadn't been able to go with Lex and the others. Jack couldn't give him any reassurances over that, and didn't bother. The boy was fast and wily, and would probably be perfectly safe outside; but rules were rules, and he wasn't going to argue with Lex. Always supposing Lex came back. If he didn't KC would have to go outside, or they'd all end up starving here, in their largely empty fortress.

Chloe refused to help Trudy with Brady, or Tai-San with her various chores, and wandered aimlessly about. The quiet of the place was beginning to get to her. She missed the old days, when the Mall had been full of people. Not just Lex and Bray and Amber, but Salene, Dal and Ryan, and Patsy and Paul. Lex and Bray had always been arguing, Amber had always been trying to keep the peace, Salene had always been worrying about something until Ryan had taken her under his wing. And Chloe, Patsy and Paul had run wild around the corridors, playing their noisy games with the twins' old dog, Bob. He was gone now too of course, and she wondered sadly if he was with Dal now. Maybe Patsy and Paul were with them too. That thought made her blood run cold, but she didn't cry. She wasn't sure that she wanted to. Crying wasn't something that she did so much these days. She listened to the sounds of their old games echoing in her memories, and heard Bob's bark again, the way it had echoed in the big empty lobby. She heard Ryan arguing some uncertain point with Lex, and Salene's voice reciting endless bedtime stories, as they had all huddled together in the early days. Things had been so frightening then, but at least they had all been together. Now she had nobody. Tai-San was only interested in Lex; Trudy was only interested in Brady - and possibly Bray. She couldn't be any use to Jack because she didn't know anything about electronics, or inventing things, and KC didn't want to play games anymore. He just said stupid things to her, and played stupid pranks that made her angry. She was lonely, but there was nothing she could do to change that. Nothing at all.

They went to bed only when it became clear that Lex and the others were not coming back any time soon. Trudy settled Brady down, then rolled into bed with a book she had been reading on and off since moving into the Mall. Tai-San tried to meditate again, and gave up with a burst of uncharacteristic temper. Kicking over her candle she climbed into the bed that she was supposed to share with Lex, and watched the little flame flicker out against the bare floor. Where was her husband, and why hadn't he come back to her? She hadn't expected him to be gone this long. She worried about him, and her mind thought up all manner of unpleasant possibilities. When at last she fell asleep it was to a dream of Eagle Mountain, and the explosion which had killed Lex's first wife. This time, though, Lex and Zandra died together, and Tai-San was left standing all alone.

Only Jack slept peacefully, though possibly only because he had been working so hard. He fell asleep at his desk, as he had done so many times before, and dreamt that he was winning an electronics prize at his old school. He had always hoped to study mechanics and computing at university, and in his sleep he did just that, being honoured as the youngest ever graduate of ever more prestigious establishments. Most of his lecturers looked just like Dal, but that oddity didn't register to his dream self. He just muttered acceptance speeches in his sleep as a hundred and one hugely famous, and now all dead, scientists presented him with outlandish awards. KC watched him from a chair in the corner, debating whether or not to try getting him into bed, but gave up on the idea. He looked comfortable enough where he was, and moving him would only wake him up. Besides, KC wasn't strong enough to lift the older boy alone, and he didn't want to wind up breaking Jack's leg again. Once was enough for anybody. In the end he abandoned the idea and the room, heading off into the corridors of the Mall in search of entertainment. He couldn't sleep, even if the others could. He was in one of his restless moods, and if he couldn't have chocolate, or a long walk through the dark streets, he would have to settle with some frenetic pacing.

He met Chloe in the back corridors. She was standing by a grubby window, half boarded up, and bearing signs of several special offer stickers. Something about two for the price of one on all apples, and something else about organic potatoes. KC had never seen the point of reading, and although he had recently made more of an effort to learn, he still didn't see why it was such a great skill to possess. What use was it to him to know how much the adults had been charged for their organic potatoes? He watched Chloe for a while, trying to decide whether to acknowledge her or slip on by, but apparently she had seen his reflection in the dirty window. She glanced back.

"Going to stay there and stare all night, or was there something you wanted to say?"

"Me? No, I er..." He looked away, feeling very awkward. "I didn't know you'd seen me."

"I've got eyes in the back of my head." She smiled very slightly. "I never used to understand that saying. My mother used to say it all the time, and I used to look for the other set. She said they were hidden by her hair, and when I asked how she could see with them then, she said it was magic. Grown up magic."

"They all used to say things like that." He felt even more awkward now. Chloe hadn't spoken this much to anybody in some days, except when she was shouting. He wasn't sure what to say to her. "Maybe they really did have eyes in the backs of their heads. They always knew what we were doing, even when they weren't looking."

"I suppose it's something that happens when you're a parent." She turned away again, looking back out of the window. "Do you ever think about your parents?"

"They died before the Virus came along. I don't remember them all that well." He shrugged. "But yeah, I think about them. I wonder what they'd think of our new world."

"And of what we get up to in it. What did my parents think when they saw me fighting the Locos and Tribe Circus, and the Chosen? Or now, with Tribe Fury? I wonder if they knew what sort of thing I'd be facing, when they got sick?"

"I suppose that depends on when it was. Early in the spread of the Virus, or late." He shrugged. "But I doubt they'd have guessed, no. Who could? Nobody would have imagined that it would really have been every adult, everywhere. Could they."

"I suppose not." She sighed. "I just wish they were here sometimes, that's all. With all the old technology. I could phone up Patsy and find out where she is. Our parents would have stopped Lex and the others from going outside."

"They wouldn't have needed to go out in the first place," pointed out KC. "If the adults were still around we wouldn't need to look for food or supplies. We wouldn't be living in this Mall, there wouldn't be dangers out on the streets." He smiled. "And none of us would ever have met each other, except for Ebony, Trudy and Bray."

"And Zoot," added Chloe. She could never forget him. The creature she had hated as something from a nightmare, who had turned out to be a young boy, a brother and a father. "Except he would never have been Zoot."

"And the Chosen would never have worshipped him, and we'd never have been afraid of him, and police car sirens would still be a nice noise." He shrugged. "Well, for some people. I never liked the police much."

"You would have done if you'd behaved yourself. You were probably out stealing things, weren't you."

"Sometimes." He grinned at her half-turned back. "But nothing major. So, er... is there some reason for all this nostalgia, or are you just bored?"

"Don't be stupid, KC." Some of the recent irritability was back in her voice, and he back-pedalled slightly, figuratively if not actually. "It's not nostalgia. I was just thinking, that's all. I want everybody back, and that got me to think about when they were all still here. And before then. Back when we were all happy."

"We weren't all happy," he told her, for his life at least had become better since the time of the Virus, when he had had a family of sorts for the first time in a long while, and had found a safe place to call home. She shrugged.

"Most of us. I was thinking about all of the others; the ones who have died, and the ones who have disappeared. Not Zandra so much, although I suppose that's unfair... but the others. Patsy and Paul."

"Yeah. And Dal." KC shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, Chlo. I wish I could say that everybody is okay. That Patsy is fine, and Salene and Ryan too, and that Lex and the others are on their way back here right now. But I can't, and I'm not much good at pretending with things like that. Con tricks yes, but fooling you into believing that everything's okay... well that's something different, isn't it. I'm sure that they probably are alright. All of them. But we'll just have to wait and find out, won't we. One way or another."

"Yeah." She stared out of the window again, at the dusty, litter strewn street. She wasn't supposed to be here, where it was possible that somebody would see her through the glass; but she had needed to see the outside world. Life could become peculiar and unreal, when you spent all day every day inside, with no view of anything beyond the walls and the ceiling. She wished that she could feel the wind in her hair, and the soft ground beneath her feet as well, but for now she would just have to content herself with a look. "KC..."

"What?" He thought about going closer, but knew full well that he might well trigger another argument if he did anything other than follow her lead, and read the signs very carefully. She was silent for several moments.

"Sit with me? In one of the rooms. Where there are some chairs. I don't know if I can get to sleep tonight, but I don't want to be alone, and I know that the others are asleep. Except Tai-San maybe, and she won't want me hanging around. I want to know that there's somebody to talk to, if I want."

"Sure." He followed her slowly upstairs, into one of the rooms that they had made into a lounge; a place of rugs and bright cushions, and pictures painted onto the boards they had used to cover the windows. They lit a single candle, and put it on the table in the middle of the room. Chloe sat down on a couch, held a cushion tightly, and tried not to let her mind wander to thoughts of people who might now be dead. KC sat beside her.

"You want to talk now?" he asked, wondering what on earth they could talk about. She shook her head, leaning back and staring into space. Several minutes passed before she spoke again.

"KC, do you know any stories?"

"Loads, yeah. So do you."

"I know. I just want to hear a story right now, that's all. Sometimes I want..." She frowned, feeling that she was saying too much, but wanting to share something of her feelings tonight. "Sometimes I just want to be a kid and listen to a story."

"Yeah." He wanted that himself often enough, but tonight he was happy to play the more grown up rôle, and let her feel that little bit reassured. "Okay. So are you sitting comfortably?"

"Yeah." She didn't look comfortable, and she clearly wasn't relaxed, but he thought she was probably about as settled as she was going to be. "What's the story about?"

"Kids," he told her, because the only other ones he knew involved horrific monsters, vampires and lots of blood, and that probably wasn't what was needed right now. "And a magic cup that granted their every wish."

"Good." It sounded like a cheerfully babyish tale, and that was just what she fancied. "Go on then."

"Okay." He could feel himself relaxing now, and silently thought that perhaps this was what he needed too. "Well once upon a time there were four kids, and they all lived next door to each other. They'd never heard of viruses or tribes, and they'd never been scared or hungry. They were called Chloe, Patsy, Paul... and Kelvin."

"Kelvin?" She looked over at him, surprised, and he shrugged a little. She had told him more than she had intended this evening - and he knew when it was a good idea to share a revelation.

"It's what the 'K' stands for," he answered, looking decidedly embarrassed. "And if you ever tell anyone..."

"I won't." She laughed lightly, and looked all the better for it. "Okay, so there were four children. What happened to them?"

"Well like I said," he continued, making everything up as he went along, "there was this magic cup..."

And as the night turned into dawn, and the candle burnt itself down towards the table top, so the gentle story progressed.

The little shack on the hillside had been home for several days, but Amber and Sasha knew that they couldn't stay there. Tribe Fury knew about it, and that at least meant that it could not be safe. Amber wasn't sure that she should be moving, for the sake of her own health and for her baby's, but it was clear that she couldn't stay behind; so taking it very slowly, and very carefully, they headed off in search of somewhere else. As it turned out they had been not at all too soon, for they had not gone far before they heard the sound of a raucous engine. Sasha pulled Amber into the cover of some heavy bushes.

"They're nowhere near us," she hissed. He held a finger to his lips.

"If they're here to check on you they might look around a bit," he whispered back, and she nodded her understanding. It made sense; she was fairly sure that they had left a trail behind them that would not be hard to follow. She tried to see if they had left any signs that might point to their hiding place, but Sasha held her back. He didn't want to take any chances.

They waited in their hiding place for hours, pressed together, with stiff, sharp twigs sticking into their skin and catching in their clothing. They heard voices, and the sound of people tramping about; then followed a long period when they heard nothing at all. Neither of them spoke, though, or tried to move. Until they had heard the engine again, and knew that they were once again alone, it was not safe to take any chances. Amber closed her eyes, and tried to convince herself that whoever was out there were friends and not enemies. She had no proof that they were members of Tribe Fury, after all. It was a foolish hope though, and she knew it. Who else would have a vehicle, or the fuel to power it? In the green clad semi-darkness, Sasha sought out her hand and held it. She didn't even consider pushing him away, or give a thought to how familiar he was getting.

"She was half dead! She couldn't have gone far!" The strident voice of some young soldier made Sasha's hand tightened reflexively around Amber's. Somebody else answered, speaking rudely and with frustration.

"Maybe she tried to head for the city?" suggested a third. He sounded young, but the mark of the military was in his voice nonetheless. Amber tried to position herself so that she could see out through the bush's thickly growing leaves, but all that she could see were wood and leaves. Nearby the new arrivals were moving about, peering at possible trails, shouting at each other about things that they thought they had seen. Sasha tried to flash one of his incessant cheery smiles at his companion, but she wasn't looking. She was staring at the impenetrable bush that separated her from a group of people who had obviously been sent to find her. She wondered what they wanted; had somebody perhaps got into trouble for leaving her behind? They didn't elaborate though, and just spread out, shouting to each other as they prowled around. Amber wondered what would happen if they found her; what they would do both to her and to Sasha. Take them to the city, presumably - but to what? Part of her wondered if perhaps it might be best to be found now, and maybe taken to the same place that these people had already taken Bray, although she knew that he wouldn't thank her for doing that. She couldn't risk it anyway, and her eyes strayed almost unconsciously to her stomach. If she gave herself up there was a chance that she would be killed; and that would also mean the death of her baby. That was unthinkable. Trying not to breathe too loudly, desperate not to move and risk giving herself away, she closed her eyes again and readied herself to wait things out.

It took a long time. The group of Furies spent ages surveying the hillside, examining everything, shouting to each other and growing frustrated. Amber wondered how much time had passed, but it was impossible to be sure. She couldn't see the passage of the sun with the bushes in the way, and there didn't seem to be much change in the quality of the light. Sasha's hand retained its grip on hers, never slackening, never wavering, and she found herself thinking that, if a great deal of time really was passing, he must have remarkable patience. The thought made her smile faintly, and Sasha saw it and gave her hand a brief squeeze. They could almost have been enjoying themselves in their refuge, she thought; two friends hiding and laughing, sharing a joke. It was better to think that way than to dwell too much on why they were really crouched in the middle of a bush.

Tribe Fury left some six or seven hours after they had arrived, roaring away down the hill in a jeep that clearly had no muffler. Amber and Sasha didn't move. Amber wasn't sure that she could, but staying still had little to do with manoeuvrability. They were worried that somebody might have stayed behind to finish the search; to be sure that their quarry had indeed left the barn, and had not just gone away for a few hours, perhaps in search of food. There was no sign of anybody though; no noise. Finally Sasha announced that he was going to take a look.

"Are you crazy? If they see you..."

"I can move pretty quickly, and of course it's not me that they're looking for." Sasha wasn't sure if he was being intentionally brave, or when he had become quite so daring, but he knew that his way was best. "You can't be in a chase right now Amber. We have to know if it's safe, and somebody other than you has to find that out. Yeah?"

"Yes. I suppose." She let him go, feeling dreadful about it, waiting with the sensation of something like thousands of ants in her stomach, until she heard the sound of footsteps approaching the bush. For a moment then she was afraid, in case it wasn't Sasha; in case he had been captured and made to talk. Then she knew that it didn't matter. She was certain that he wouldn't betray her,but if he had there was no hiding from it. She pushed her way out of the bush, and when she saw that it was him, and that he was beaming happily, she surprised herself by giving him an excited hug. He returned it, equally surprised, then let her go.

"Nobody's around," he told her. "Coast seems to be clear. We should get going."

"Yes." She looked away, back in the direction in which they had originally been heading. "I feel bad. We should be going to the city, not to some safe haven somewhere else."

"I know. Hey, I want to know what's going on there too you know. I want to be sure that everybody down there is okay. I had other friends in the city besides you, and I liked the rest of your tribe, too. Maybe not Bray exactly, I'll admit that... but the kids, and the others. They were good to me. I'm sorry that you don't know where Patsy is. She was a cute kid."

"Yeah. Yeah, but we'll find her... Maybe after all of this is sorted out." Amber thought about what a mammoth task that would be, and felt heavy hearted. "But we can't get started yet. We can't even go back to the city, can we."

"You know we can't. You're just not ready for that yet. Besides, we don't know if it's even possible to get into the city. If it's going to be at all tough then we're definitely not going to be able to do it yet. You have to be sure that you're strong enough."

"Yeah." She felt bad, even though she knew that she shouldn't. This was about her baby; it wasn't as though she were making excuses, or trying to get out of helping her friends. "So where exactly do we head for?"

"We'll make a camp. I'm no slouch at that, you know. Somewhere near a water source, so I can fish, and somewhere quiet and safe, so that you can get plenty of rest. As close to the city as we can, if it'll make you feel any better. I wish I knew how long you should rest up for."

"Me too. Maybe a week?"

"More like several, but we'll take each day as it comes. We'll walk slowly on the way, too. There's no rush."

"There might well be."

"Yes, I know. I was trying to make you feel better." He smiled sadly. "It's not your fault, Amber. They'd understand that."

"Yeah." Quite suddenly she didn't want to think about it anymore, even though she knew that she always would. "Come on. There's always a chance that those people might come back."

"True. The more distance we put between ourselves and that barn, the better. You're to tell me if you feel tired though, or if you feel... anything else."

"If I start to feel contractions again, there's nothing we can do about it, is there. Not this time." She smiled sadly, and remembered how she hadn't wanted the baby at first. Now she didn't think that she could carry on if she lost it. Sasha looked uncomfortable. He wanted to make her feel better and didn't know how, so smiling bravely she took his arm, and tried to tell herself that everything was going to be alright.

"It'll be okay, Sasha," she said, hoping that it would feel better if she said it aloud. "The baby is going to be fine."

"I'm sure that's true." He smiled at her fondly, sorry that he couldn't help her to be really sure, then started to lead the way onwards. The wait for Tribe Fury to finish their search had robbed them of a lot of good walking time, and although they were both now hungry, they didn't want to waste any more daylight by stopping to eat. It was important to get going. Arm in arm, they headed off in search of their next place of shelter, both with so much about which they were trying very hard not to think. It wasn't easy. In the end Sasha burst into song, and eventually, hesitantly at first, Amber joined in. It was many miles later though before she finally began to relax.

Chapter Text

The Chosen had made an efficient base of operations in the tunnels. Clearing away rubble, opening up more tunnels, and making a stab at furnishing several larger chambers had leant a sense of practicality to the place, and lit by candle light it had an air of Gothic drama as well. Not that the four Mall Rats really appreciated any of that when they were dragged into the first such chamber and thrown against a wall. It was not a big room; simply a larger, rounded section of tunnel, with shored up walls and a roughly tiled floor. An old health and safety poster on one wall suggested that it might have been something to do with the underground railway once upon at time, though there was nothing to suggest that it had still been in use when the Virus came. It had been filled with old pieces of furniture, some home-made, and a pyramid of food tins stood against one wall. There was a store of batteries too, and a plastic cask with a built-in tap that was presumably a source of water. No beds, though, noted Ebony. There was probably a lot more to this headquarters than she could see, then. She looked around the place with a calm and calculating eye, letting Lex and Bray do the shouting. Their captors were unmoved by the anger, and the Guardian was apparently amused by it. Pride just looked disdainful and cold.

"So what happens now?" Reining in his anger enough to ask a sensible question, Lex shook off the hand gripping his arm. The almost shaven-headed, blue-scalped heavy who had spoken to them before smiled thinly.

"Sentence has already been passed upon one of you. I can't imagine it being very different for the rest."

"You can't burn me alive down here. Try that and you'll suffocate yourselves." Bray's voice was a low growl, showing a level of anger that Ebony hadn't seen him display in a long time. Even her own nefarious deeds and acts of betrayal hadn't warranted that kind of hate. She sympathised. Her own feelings for Zoot were strong enough to make her loathe everything that the Chosen had ever tried to do, but for Bray it was all so much worse. Blue head - Brun, as Pride had known him during the days of the Mall's occupation - let his smile grow.

"There are lots of ways to kill. Fire is nicely demonstrative. It was supposed to make a point, and send a message, but that's less important now. I'm sure we can come up with something equally fitting."

"We can't wait." Lex turned to the Guardian, who was currently hanging back, watching the proceedings with an air of obvious amusement. "What are you grinning at?

"Do not address the Guardian without the proper respect." Brun seemed anxious to do his part as chief acolyte. Clearly either subservience or merely the art of being a true creep came easily to him. Bray, on the other hand, didn't think much of the idea of showing the Guardian any respect at all, and like Lex he threw off the grip that still pinned one of his arms.

"Okay, so you want us dead. Fine." He didn't bother tempering the anger he so obviously felt, and instead let it all show now. "So kill us, or try to. Don't try to get us all to behave as though we have some respect for you. You know damn well what we think of you, and those feelings haven't changed just because you got lucky today."

"The Guardian will one day be the ruler of all the Earth. He is entitled to--"

"Bull." There was no stopping Bray now, and as the incensed Brun advanced on him, Bray pushed him violently away with a stiff-armed shove. A number of the Chosen descended upon him, but with a loud, abrupt cry, the Guardian froze them all in their tracks.

"I think that's enough arguing and fighting from all of you." He carried himself with all his old flair and superiority, despite his recent breakdown. When Bray's burning eyes turned upon him now he smiled indulgently, and waved a hand at the rabble of guards. "Leave us." He told them imperiously. "I don't need you now."

"Sir, I--"

"Enough. Our... guests will join me in my chambers, and we'll endeavour to have something approaching a civilised conversation." The Guardian brushed what was probably only imaginary dust from the skirts of his pristine white robe. "Is there a problem with my order, Brun? Some reason why you don't feel capable of doing my bidding?"

"No. No, of course not." Brun lowered his eyes, looking as though he had been severely reprimanded. "It's just that to leave you alone with our enemies seems--"

"You think perhaps that I'm not capable of making sensible decisions any longer?"

"No!" Brun was reduced to a madly stammering bundle of apology. "F-forgive me, sir. I-I-I only meant that I-I well that I--"

"Never mind what you meant, Brun." The Guardian turned away, opening a drawer beneath a battered metal desk and withdrawing an automatic pistol. It gleamed black in the light from the multiple candles, and reflected the hard line of his faint smile all along its barrel. "There'll be no cause for concern. I merely want the chance for a talk with these people."

"Yes sir." Clearly reassured by the sight of the gun, Brun backed down immediately. "In that case, consider yourselves lucky to have been given a stay of execution. You'll see a doorway just to your right. Go through it."

"Or what?" asked Lex, who always liked to make his presence felt. The Guardian cocked an eyebrow, and gave the gun a small wiggle.

"There's a short length of tunnel, and then a thick curtain," he said, rather conversationally. "You'll kindly oblige me by going through, into the room beyond. And don't think about trying anything when you're on the other side of the curtain. I'm very good with this gun."

"Great." Lex shared a look with his companions, but didn't get much feedback. Pride was still looking sulky and cold, and Bray was just fuming. Only Ebony seemed to be thinking especially clearly, and he could see that she was curious. He shrugged, feigning indifference. "Okay. Fine. Come on guys."

"Good choice." Still smiling in what he seemed to think was a benevolent manner, the Guardian waited for them all to enter the tunnel before following. There was no light, but the glow from the chamber behind meant that they were not entirely blind. Ahead the curtain hung as a thick black shadow, and Lex reached out for it, knocking it aside. It felt heavy, and smelt faintly musty, as though it had hung for a long time in whichever place it had been taken from.

The room beyond was something very different to the practical, cluttered space of the first chamber. It seemed to have been hollowed out of rock, giving the impression of an old mine cutting, or perhaps part of some long diverted underground river. Several stalactites hung from the ceiling, reflecting candlelight like bizarre disco accoutrements. And there were a lot of candles to reflect. They stood on the room's large central table, and on a smaller table to one side. They stood on the floor in little clusters, and the hung from the ceiling by slowly spinning ropes. Their light picked out several thick rugs, and a number of pictures. Whether or not they were original works of art or just reproductions Lex neither knew nor cared. They looked strange though, in this subterranean dwelling place.

"Lex." The voice was a surprise, for he had thought that every part of the room was well lit. He soon realised that one part of it was not so bright, though, and it took him a moment to see the figure bent over a rickety table. Why he had chosen to work in the dark, rather than at one of the lighted tables, Lex didn't know. He did know who the figure was though; the blue hair and blue-belted, white robe were as much an identifying feature as the faintly nervous voice.

"Luke." Pushing past Lex, Ebony strode further into the room to greet her former Chancellor. "I wondered where you'd got to."

"I was... brought here." He looked uncomfortable. "What's happened? Who else is here?"

"Only the four of us." She moved aside so that he could see the rest of her fellow prisoners. "No Ellie I'm afraid."

"I... think I'm rather glad actually." He saw the curtain twitch, and snapped to a sort of attention as the Guardian entered. "You've... captured them?"

"Yes. Why don't you congratulate me, Luke?" His commander approached with head held high and shoulders squared. "A little group of Mall Rats, here for my pleasure. And don't look so disapproving. I know you liked to consider yourself one of them for a time, but all of that is forgotten now, isn't it."

"Yes." Luke's eyes sought the floor and held it, a faint red flush showing in his face beneath the blue markings of paint. Lex snorted.

"Well he might have considered himself one of us once, but obviously not for long. What happened to your new leaf, Luke? Your boss waggle his curls irresistibly?

"It wasn't like that." Luke was looking increasingly uncomfortable. "What's going to happen to them, Guardian?"

"What do you think should happen to them?" Sitting down on a large wooden chair that had a commanding position in the room, the Guardian tried out his attempt at a benevolent smile once again. This time he didn't try to hide the unpleasant glint in his eyes. "They're already under sentence of death, so really you can let your imagination run wild."

Luke shifted his feet awkwardly. "I don't--"

"Actually," cut in Ebony, using one of her best eyelash flutters, "it's only Bray who's under sentence of death." Pride shot her a faintly disbelieving look, and she met it with pure innocence. "What? It's true."

"Guilty by association," the Guardian informed her. "And anyway, you're all equally guilty of destroying my rule. All equally guilty of defying our great lord Zoot."

"Don't give me that crap." Even the gun couldn't stop Bray from taking a step forward, but Pride moved quickly enough to stop him from advancing any further. "You don't believe that rubbish any more than we do, and I won't have you talking about my brother that way. Twisting his memory into some--"

"Regardless of who believes what, Bray, my followers expect to see you and your friends suffer for what you did. And if you don't watch your mouth, I might just think about letting them have what they want. There are all kinds of ways to kill a heretic. Fascinating, painful ways spread throughout the pages of history. Am I not right Luke?"

"Yes." Luke wasn't meeting anybody's eyes now, and remained focused firmly on the floor. "All kinds of ways. But we--"

"And," cut in the Guardian, who knew full well that his former lieutenant didn't want anything to happen to any of the Mall Rats - or to anybody else for that matter, "we're prepared to do just about anything to see that Zoot's justice is done."

"I told you to--" began Bray, but Lex pushed him aside and stood firmly between him and the loathsome leader of the Chosen. Something had struck the former sheriff, and it had made enough of an impression to cut through his own wild anger.

"What do you mean, you 'might just think about letting them have what they want'?"

"Ah." The Guardian smiled at him, and crossed his legs in as regal a fashion as he could manage. "Well, it's interesting you should mention that." His eyes, bright and teasing now, lingered on Bray. "Fate - or Zoot - has brought you here." A flutter of a smile briefly brushed the superiority from his face, as he savoured the effect that the mention of Zoot's name had upon Bray. "And it would be an idiot who wouldn't agree that we all have problems just now. I knew that trouble was coming. There had been rumours. Whisperings, from outsiders and wanderers. Great chaos they said, so my most loyal followers and I tried to leave the city by boat. We didn't make it, obviously. After the aeroplane went over, boats came in. Not many of them, but enough to make escape by sea rather awkward."

"Are you coming to a point any time soon?" asked Pride, who was rather of the opinion that if they were going to be executed it would be preferable to get it over with, rather than being chronically bored first. The Guardian spared him a quick glower, then returned his attention to Lex.

"My point is," he said, with all the superiority and force of the autocratic monarch he liked to see himself as, "that the city is hardly in a good shape right now."

"That's an understatement." Ebony, as ever, was beginning to see possibilities presenting themselves. Bray shot her a furious look, obviously suspecting that she was about to begin fraternising with the enemy. She frowned at him, in a way that was supposed to speak volumes, but which as usual managed to be half flirtation and only annoyed him further. The Guardian spoke on, as though there had been no interruption.

"I have barely more than half a dozen followers. Eight including Luke - though I have my own reasons for not wanting to count my dear lieutenant. We can try to spread our word, but thanks to you we're likely to find hatred and suspicion in the city now, and besides, things are awkward. Most people are beyond our reach now."

"Our hearts bleed for you." Pride wondered vaguely why it was him making the bitter comeback, and not Bray - but his simmering companion didn't seem to trust himself to say anything just now. He was merely standing very still, staring at the Guardian with dark and hateful eyes.

"I don't expect your understanding." The Guardian was silent for a moment, regarding his prisoners in obvious thought. Finally he stood up, casting aside his regal pretensions. "We need to get rid of Tribe Fury," he said at last, "You fought the Chosen, and I assume that you also plan to fight your new enemy. Well I want to fight them too. I want them driven from this City, and ideally crushed altogether. I--"

"If you're talking about some kind of alliance, forget it." Bray's eyes had lost their ferocious gleam, and he was no longer shouting. Instead he spoke in a quiet, hoarse voice. Lex frowned.

"Well hang on." He could see Bray's point, and an alliance with a nut like the Guardian might well turn out to be the cause of major problems; but it could also be a good thing. Even if nothing else it meant that they would be doubling their forces. Bray shot him a murderous glare.

"We are not making an alliance with this creep. Just think about everything he did. The people he killed and had sent away. Try asking Jack and Chloe what they think about it."

"Yeah." Lex looked a little chastised - though only a very little. "But on the other hand, we're down to nine people, and we're the only real fighters. This gives us another nine people."

"Nine people we can't trust," pointed out Pride. "And who'll probably try to kill us the first chance they get."

"And don't let the others hear you say that we're the only fighters," added Bray. "We get by fine, Lex. We are not working with the Chosen."

"Well if it's a choice between working with them and being executed by them, I'd like to come to my own decision there, Bray." Ebony flashed him one of her entirely insincere smiles. "We've been talking for days about fighting back, but we don't have a chance on our own and you know it. We need allies."

"And right now we don't have any." Lex met Bray's furious glare head on. "Yeah. I know. And if I was you I'd feel the same way. I do feel the same way. I just don't think we can afford to be too choosy." He winced. "And now I'm trying to be the voice of reason. Now I know something's wrong."

"Don't let me pressure you into any immediate decisions." The Guardian's voice was oily sweet. "But don't forget that my people are expecting an execution. If I don't give them news of one sort or another fairly soon, they're likely to come in here and get you." He shrugged, looking angelic. "And that really wouldn't be my fault then, would it. Look, we've had our differences. And I admit, I despite each and every one of you. Your whole tribe is guilty of offences against me and my teachings, and I'd like to see you all suffer - but I want to defeat Tribe Fury more. You have my word - in Zoot's name - that I won't see a hand or a weapon raised against you until the enemy is gone. After that.. well." He smiled broadly. "After that the city will belong to the strongest of us, and once again there'll be a free for all. There'll be no rules then."

"Sounds fair to me." Ebony sighed at the others, with their uncertain faces and suspicious eyes. "It's better than an execution - and don't think that he's going to let us out of here alive if we refuse. If you think you can fight your way out of here, fine. We'll make the effort - and at least one of us is sure to die trying. What good is that going to do us? The last thing we need is to lessen our forces even more. Do you want to be the one who never makes it back, Lex? Leaving Tai-San all alone? Or you, Bray? What do you think that would do to Trudy, now that she doesn't have Salene to fall back on? And what would we tell Amber when she eventually turns up? There's a time for hate and revenge, and right now the best place for it is directed at Tribe Fury. Just tell me I'm wrong."

"She actually is making sense." Pride met Bray's eyes and saw that he was recognising the truth of it all too. "I hate to hear myself say it, but an alliance might just be the best thing. It's got to be better than dying."

"You really want to do this?" Bray wasn't sure that he believed what he was hearing, even if he did know that on some level it was probably a good idea. Lex tried to look sympathetic.

"We're not going to be making friends with them," he offered, as though in compensation. Bray shot him an unimpressed glance.

"Well that makes it alright then." He turned away, mind drifting back to the many moments in the past that he had spent in thinking of his hatred of the Chosen. Of how much he despised their twisted leader, with his feigned belief in his mad little religion. Of the day the Guardian and his crazed followers had tried to burn him alive. The Guardian had killed Ned, Alice's inadvisable boyfriend; he had had so many people sent away. There was no way of knowing if Ryan and Patsy were still alive... or Danni. Bray couldn't help but think sadly of her, the girl he had thought he was in love with, but who had slipped from his mind almost entirely when he had been reunited with Amber. She could be anywhere; or she might never have left the city alive. He would probably never know; and the idea of joining forces with the very people who had quite probably murdered her made him sick deep inside.

"Bray?" Pride's voice was gentle, for he was aware enough of his companion's unhappiness. Bray didn't answer. "We need a decision, Bray. From all of us. I guess the rest of us are going to agree to the alliance, but if you're really against it--"

"Of course I'm against it." He glanced up then, dragging his thoughts away from memories that made his blood boil. "What do you expect? But you're right. I suppose."

"So we're allies?" With an ostentatious display of theatrics, the Guardian laid aside his gun and beamed around at all and sundry. Bray ignored him.

"We should get back to the Mall," he said, his voice thick with self-loathing for the choice he had just made. Lex nodded. He had been away from Tai-San for long enough, and being back with the man who had nearly stolen her from him made him even more anxious to be back. The Guardian smiled a slow smile.

"We have things to discuss," he told them grandly. "The terms of our alliance, our plans for regaining our city from Tribe Fury."

"Our city," Bray told him. "You don't belong here."

"But I am here Bray. And you need me, so let's forget about arguing over trivialities." His smile made his eyes shine with insincere warmth. "We need a meeting place. Somewhere where we can come together at pre-arranged times, to discuss tactics. Agreed?"

"Agreed." Ebony looked around at the others. "How about the rail yard? It's been pretty much abandoned since the Locos moved into the hotel, and there's nothing there that Tribe Fury would be interested in. It's well positioned, too, and easy to defend if the worst comes to the worst."

"Visibility's good," conceded Bray, his voice still gruff. "We'd be able to see if anybody came."

"The rail yard then." The Guardian nodded in satisfaction. "The former headquarters of Zoot himself. How fitting. We shall be guided in our cause by the lingering aura of our great leader."

"And you'll die painfully there too, if there's any justice." Losing patience rapidly, Bray strode over to the curtain. "Come on. It's not exactly a short walk back."

"You won't get past my people without my say so, Bray. I'd recommend that you don't try to." The Guardian's voice had lost its false cheer, and had taken on a hint of snide force. "I'm not through with my terms yet."

"Don't push," warned Pride. The Guardian laughed loudly.

"Nothing too major, I assure you. But if you want to get out of here then you have to agree." The Guardian's eyes strayed to the gun that he had so recently set down. The Mall Rats knew that there was very little chance of one of them making it to the weapon before he did. Lex scowled furiously.

"What are these terms?" he asked, in a tone of voice that suggested he was intending to refuse them all outright. The Guardian regarded him silently for a moment, apparently rather liking the idea of trying to build up some tension.

"Just an exchange," he said after a moment. "A little something to cement the bond. To help prove that we can trust one another."

"Well if you think we're going to leave you a hostage, you're very much mistaken." Bray's eyes glittered with the lights of some very black humour. "Unless it's Ebony you want to keep here, in which case you're welcome."

"Thanks a bunch." Ebony looked back to the Guardian. "So? Do you want one of us to stay here? Because none of us will."

"No. What use do I have for a hostage? You're all far more use to me out there, doing whatever it is against Tribe Fury that you did against me and my people. No, what I want is more an exchange of utilities. Of supplies. We have food to spare, and maybe one or two other things - and if I'm not very much mistaken, by now you've got your water filter up on the roof working again. The Mall always seemed to be full of batteries too. Fully charged ones. I want to know how you do it."

"Maybe you wouldn't need to, if you hadn't destroyed so many of the things when you ruled the city," pointed out Lex. "Didn't think so highly of electricity then, did you."

"That was then. Now I have new priorities, and the Great Age of Zoot, when all such trappings of the Old World are cast aside, will have to wait." He smiled beatifically, apparently enthralled by his own great plans. "So do we have a deal?"

"How much food are we talking about?" asked Ebony, determined to ask the question before Bray could break in with an inevitable refusal. Her fiery old friend remained silent however, apparently giving the proposal fair, if prolonged, consideration. It fell to Lex to finish things.

"We do need food," he admitted, wondering why he kept having to be the responsible one today. "The water system isn't going yet, but it very soon will be. We don't have our battery charging facilities up and running again yet either, but we can show you how to do it. You'll have to send somebody with us back to the Mall."

"I know." The Guardian smoothed out his shining white robe, obviously preparing himself for another declamation. "I shall be coming with you myself. I won't claim not to trust my followers, but I'd rather keep certain things to myself. If we're to strive for a world where such things as electricity are obsolete, there are temptations that need to be removed. I don't want them to know how to generate the stuff."

"It's not difficult," muttered Bray, who was in full sulky, broody swing, and apparently enjoying it. "Just basic high school science. Or are you saying that your followers are too stupid to think it up by themselves? Or see what you're doing and copy it?"

"I'll ignore that." The Guardian might have been the psychopathic and objectionable one, but he had an ability to sound ever more reasonable than Bray. "But anyway, if you want to leave here alive, you'll take me with you. Luke will come as well, to help carry the stores. You'll be able to take more food with an extra pair of hands."

"The two of you?" Pride looked from the Guardian to Luke and back again, an expression of disbelief on his face. "How the hell are we supposed to get you to the Mall? These tunnels won't take us right to our front door, and it's not easy moving about out there without being seen, as it is. You expect us to get two guys in bright white robes through the streets? You'd show up like beacons even in daylight, and by now it must be dark. Tribe Fury have searchlights, and if one of them catches you, you'll glow bright enough to be seen right out to sea."

"Then we'll change our clothes." The Guardian was quite determined not to be left behind. "I want to know how to recharge batteries, and I'm going to hear all of the details from whoever is in charge of doing it for you. I need an air pump down here, and that's going to take a lot of power. I think I can use car batteries to power a fan, and if I understand it right, the fan can power the car batteries in return. But I don't know how to set that up. I think you do. You use some kind of dynamo, right?"

"Yeah." Bray turned away, suddenly feeling the need for an air pump himself. He felt terrible, and the sense of constriction in this underground place was only making things worse. This was the man responsible for the death of Dal, and quite possibly of Danni; for the possible deaths of Ryan and Patsy, and for a lot more besides. And yet here he was, preparing to take that same man to the Mall, to exchange goods and favours, and enter into an alliance with him. An air pump wouldn't be nearly enough to chase away the feeling of suffocation.

"Aren't you afraid that we'll kill you, once we're out of here?" Lex couldn't believe that the Guardian would trust his safety to his bitter enemies. The older boy smiled at him, eyes glittering with a faint sheen of mockery.

"You're the good guys," was all that he said. He didn't really need to say more. What exactly could they do to him that he would have need to fear? They weren't the type to leave him to the non-existent mercies of Tribe Fury, nor to deal with him themselves. It was a pleasant thought that they might like to entertain, but it wasn't something that they could ever really do. If the Guardian decided that he wanted to go visiting with them, they were stuck with him for as long as he chose to stay. They couldn't even lock him up once they had him at the Mall, for his followers would be sure to know where to look - or where to send Tribe Fury in a typically grand gesture of real revenge. Lex glowered.

"So they're coming then?" He had no desire to take either of them, even if they weren't wearing their conspicuous robes, but Bray seemed to be relenting. All the anger and sourness had gone from his fellow Mall Rat's face. Bray shot him a look that was almost entirely devoid of expression.

"They're coming," he said, with a flash of his old authority. "And we're going, which is more important."

"Hear hear. Enough with the tunnels and threats and the rest of it. We stay here any longer, and everybody back at the Mall will have given up and gone over to Tribe Fury." Ebony rolled her eyes, infuriated by all this endless posturing. So the Guardian was an enemy, and a deadly one at that - but there was no immediate threat so why worry? Pragmatism was all.

"Good." Looking repulsively self-satisfied, the Guardian gestured imperiously to Luke. "In that case we'll change. Come along Luke."

"Why do I have to come?" Not at all glad at the idea of being taken back to the place he had been taken from, Luke was thinking largely of Ellie. How would she respond to seeing him again? And Jack, who had always hated the boy who had stolen her from him? He had no way of knowing that Ellie was far away from the city, at the farm her father had owned. She knew nothing of Tribe Fury, and nothing of Luke's whereabouts. Neither did she particularly care.

"You're coming because I want you to come. Because I don't trust you not to leave here without me to keep an eye on you. Now come on." The Guardian grabbed his wrist, pulling him towards a second curtain on the far side of the room. "You should like to be with me, Luke. It's an honour to be requested at the side of your great leader. Now get in there and get changed." He pushed him through the curtain, then disappeared after him. Lex slumped against the wall of the chamber.

"This is insane. We're really taking those two weirdoes back to the Mall with us?"

"Do we have a choice?" Ebony picked up the gun, long left abandoned. "Of course, we could always take care of them once we're outside."

"Put that down." Bray took the gun away from her, dropping it back onto the table. "Don't you think he'll notice if it's not there? He's left it on purpose, just to rub in how helpless we are."

"Helpless? He said himself that there are nine of them. With this gun--"

"We can maybe shoot one or two of them before the rest of them get out their guns and shoot us." Pride began to pace. "We can't try anything when we're in here, so why not just give in gracefully? We've already agreed to an alliance. How can it be worse to go through with this exchange as well? Just grin and bear it, and get them in and out of the Mall as quickly as we can."

"And try to persuade Jack to share his design secrets with the guy who had him exiled into slavery." Lex rubbed his eyes. "Tell me this isn't really as bad as it seems."

"You're the one who made the deal," Bray reminded him. Lex glared.

"Yeah. Because somebody else was too busy glowering and glaring at everything to have been making any sense. You've been snapping and growling since we came in here. That hasn't exactly been helpful."

"That's the Guardian." Bray's temper was beginning to rise again. "This is the Chosen. Remember? The ones who tore our city apart. Who killed Dal. Who killed Danni. Who tried to turn my brother into some kind of weird cult figure. Of course I'm angry. You think I'm happy about this? I'd rather we were in Tribe Fury headquarters right now."

"Cut it out, both of you." Pride could hear approaching footsteps, quiet on the rough stone floor. The Guardian and his unwilling protégé were returning already. Everybody glanced up as the curtain was pushed aside, but if the Guardian noticed the atmosphere he was walking into, he gave no sign of it. He merely smiled around at everybody, his bearing ever more regal now that he was dressed in what appeared to be a suit of black velvet. Beside him, in a shirt and trousers of the Chosen's particular shade of blue, Luke looked utterly miserable, but the Mall Rats barely noticed him. Pride forced a not too falsified smile.

"Are we ready?" he asked, in the tone of voice his father had used to use as the family set out on summer holidays in times long past. Bray nodded heavily, the suffocating feeling returning fast. He needed to be out in the fresh air. So did they all.

"None of you wanted my gun?" Retrieving the weapon, the Guardian stashed it away inside his clothing. "You see? We're all friends already."

"Or just not as stupid as you think we are." Lex led the way to the curtain. "Now let's hurry up and get our stores."

"Ah yes. Your food." The Guardian smiled his unpleasant little smile. "I'll have to think of something to tell Brun and the others. They'll still be expecting to execute you all. Still, I shouldn't think it'll be a problem."

"Great." Ebony stayed behind momentarily as their new ally stalked majestically back to his adoring followers. Lex and Pride followed uncertainly, but both Luke and Bray hung back with her, "Every time I think maybe we can make this work, he opens his mouth and everything seems ten times worse. Why do I get the feeling this is not going to go well?"

"I can't imagine." Bray rubbed his eyes, trying to focus his mind beyond Dal and Danni. The only thing he could think of instead was Amber, and that certainly didn't help. "Let's just get out there. The sooner we're out of here, the sooner we can get back to the Mall, and the sooner we can get that madman out of our lives and back here in his sewer where he belongs." He cast a bitter look at Luke. "And you along with him."

"Yeah." Luke lowered his blue head, and started off after his hated leader. He had been a Mall Rat once, or had hoped to be; but the Guardian had ended all of that with a rope and a cruel hand. Now it seemed that the Mall Rats hated him as much as he hated the Guardian. He didn't blame them. They didn't know the truth, and he couldn't imagine that they would want to listen.

"At least we're getting some food stores out of this," commented Ebony, in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. Bray glared at her.

"Yeah, sure. We've had to make a crazy deal with a Fury, another with the Guardian - both of them raving nutcases and capable of doing anything. But at least we've got some food stores."

"I prefer to look on the bright side." Ebony pushed past him, striding off after the others down the short length of tunnel that led to the main cavern. The glow of candles surrounded her, and Bray and Luke both watched her alluring silhouette for a moment - then Bray's glower returned, and with it Luke's ever sinking spirits.

"If you can," he told the Mall Rats' sometime leader, "get away once we're out in the open. Kill the Guardian if you can. Because believe me, he will kill you. He wants to defeat Tribe Fury, and he knows that you and your friends are probably the best chance he's got to do that - but there's nothing he wants more than to see you dead. You and Trudy. I don't like to think what he might have planned for Zoot's child."

"Yeah. Great." Bray quickened his step, following after Ebony and leaving Luke behind. Wonderful. All his fears confirmed, and at a time when his spirits were already at a decidedly low ebb. As if he didn't have enough problems, with Tribe Fury to deal with, as well as Racha and his mad games. Now he had another enemy ranged against him - another lethal obstacle to remove. He only wished he could get rid of the feeling that things were going to get a whole lot worse.

Chapter Text

Amber and Sasha found a good place to shelter, far enough from the outskirts of town to feel safe, yet close enough that they could pretend they were in a position to be of some use to the beleaguered citizens. In the burnt out shell of a small cottage they built a somewhat spare camp, and Sasha constructed a roof to cover it, made from branches, leaves and bits of furniture that had escaped the worst of the fire. It gave the camp some solidity and a degree of weather proofing, as well as a certain amount of camouflage. He was sure that Amber would be safe, then, whilst he was foraging for food, and to be extra certain of her welfare he made her the best bed he could, from grasses, heather and mounds of fallen leaves. He didn't dare build a fire so close to the city, but she claimed to be warm enough, and they had agreed to keep each other warm at night if necessary.

He caught some fish, and cooked them on a small fire some distance away, built in the gully carved out by the passing stream. He hoped to be invisible there, and indeed there was no sign of anybody coming to investigate. He wrapped the cooked fish up in bundles of leaves, and carrying a bowlful of assorted boiled vegetation, he hurried back to Amber. She was resting as best she could given her general state of agitation, but she relaxed a little more when she saw him returning.

"Hey." It was an awkward greeting, for he still wasn't entirely sure how to handle such things. She was, after all, the girl he had once planned to spend the rest of his life with, but she was carrying somebody else's child now, and was desperate to get back to him. Sasha wanted to greet her with a hug, but instead all that he trusted himself to do was smile and treat her like any ordinary friend.

"Hey Sasha." She smiled appreciatively at the food as he divided it up. "You've been busy."

"And I hope you haven't." He nodded vaguely in the direction of her stomach. "Any... twinges?"

"No. I thought I felt it move a little while ago, but it didn't feel dangerous. Not like contractions."

"Good." He ate some of his fish, feeling suddenly rather uncertain how to continue the conversation. "That's good. Maybe if you carry on taking it easy for a while, things'll stay okay."

"Yeah." Responding to his sudden awkwardness with some of her own, she smiled slightly. "So did you see anybody while you were out?"

"No. Not a soul. I didn't hear anything either. The city seems pretty quiet."

"Maybe that's better than the alternative?"

"Maybe." They ate in silence for a while, before something else struck him. "Remember the gunfire and explosions we heard? If they've stopped it must mean that they've finished taking over now. Where do you suppose they've set up home? Billeted all over the place, or in one central headquarters? We'll need to know, if we're going to try to fight them eventually."

"Maybe we should worry about that later."

"We don't know how much of a later we've got." He smiled though. "But point taken. I suppose we can find that kind of thing out when we're more in a position to actually fight these people."

"Yeah." She couldn't help smiling. "The two of us, fighting them. With their guns and bombs and jeeps and planes. What do we have?"

"A spoon." He grinned at her. "And a bit of fishing line."

"And some fish." She started to laugh then. "We can't lose, can we."

"Of course not." He joined in with the laughter, forgetting about his earlier awkwardness. "Give it a bit of time, when you're a hundred percent again, and we'll take our spoon and show them who's boss."

"Yeah. Absolutely." Her laughing died down to a happy giggle. "This is crazy. The two of us, ready to free an entire city."

"I'm sure there have been stranger liberators. Classical history is full of terribly heroic underdogs. So's mythology. And literature."

"Show off." She was impressed, though. With the exception of Bray she hadn't met many well read boys in her life. They ranged from the kind who refused to admit to any interests beyond football or rugby, to those like Lex, who couldn't read at all. Dal had been different of course - but he had only seemed interested in non-fiction. In technical books, in science and medicine. He hadn't been very interested in her bowing shelves filled with old tales and books of ancient alleged truths. That sort of thing was meat and drink to Sasha of course. He lived on stories. They were his livelihood.

"Fish good?" he asked, as the conversation seemed to be dying away. She nodded.

"Wonderful. You're a great cook. I haven't eaten this well since I was with the Gaians out in the woods. Now they could write cookery books."

"I know. I spent some time with them once, seems like a long time ago. Before I met you, when I still wasn't sure if the city was safe." He smiled. "Doesn't make me sound very brave, does it. You were living there every day, and I wasn't even sure if it was safe to visit."

"Hey, I didn't want to be there. Dal and I wanted out long before you turned up. We hated it there, him especially. Stuck in the Mall all day. Heaven for Lex, maybe - under siege, always fighting with somebody. All that tension. I suppose I preferred living with the Gaians."

"I suppose I should sulk about that. You wouldn't leave the Mall for me."

"I didn't choose to leave for them. It was... well, things happened. The others thought I was dead, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go back to them... It was complicated. Then I fell in with the Gaians, and this guy called Pride." She smiled at his expression.

"Should I be jealous now?"

"Maybe. That was complicated too. Still, like I said - they had great food."

"Which is definitely important." He lay back on the ground, a stretch of stone flagging, with some pieces of carpet still remaining. "You can rule the richest tribe in the world, or the strongest, or the most powerful - but I'm not interested. My stomach is much more important."

"It'll be your back that you have to worry about if you go on lying on bare stone." She frowned at him, concerned. "You can't be comfortable?"

"I'm used to sleeping in odd places. I live on the road. There isn't always a bed when you're miles away up in the mountains looking for hill tribes to play for." He shifted slightly, wishing that he was on such ground now, instead of hard stone flags. They were not nearly so welcoming. Amber smiled.

"Don't be daft. You collected all this grass and heather, you might as well share it."

"I don't think that's--"

"There's more than enough room, even with all the proper proprieties." She moved aside and gestured to the bed. "Come on. I need you in good shape, Sasha. I don't know how well I can take care of myself on my own."

"If you're sure." Feeling awkward again, he settled down next to her. It was more comfortable there, certainly. With a fire it would have been well nigh perfect.

"I wonder what time it is?" She laid aside her now empty bowl, and relaxed into the embrace of the slightly scratchy bed. Sasha laughed shortly.

"Half past eight," he guessed, clearly not having a clue. "And it's Monday. I've just finished my piano lessons."

"Badminton." She smiled at the old and unexpected memory. A short walk home, meeting Dal on the way. He would be leaving his computer club, and at some point it had become a tradition to walk home together. Funny how she had never had a conversation like this with Bray. All that she knew about his earlier life was that he had had some kind of a relationship with Ebony, and that he had liked to look after his younger brother Martin. She didn't know anything about after school clubs, or even what he might once have watched on TV.

"Then a film or some old sitcom," piped up Sasha suddenly, as though he knew exactly what she had been thinking. "My parents loved old TV, and we'd watch all the classic repeats. Comedies they must have seen a hundred times."

"My parents too. It was like an old ritual. All of us sitting together. My dad's parents lived with us, so it was quite cosy. I always liked having a lot of people around. Not like you, out there all on your own."

"I'll let you into a secret. I'm not so fond of the 'all on my own' bit. I much prefer it when I meet up with a tribe. It's just that I've got nothing much to offer in the long term. They'd soon get bored of me when they'd heard all my stories, and I'd get bored too. Restless. All those adventure stories my dad used to tell me I suppose."

"My father used to tell me stories too. He had so many books it's a wonder we had room for them in the house."

"I think I'd have liked your father."

"I know he'd have liked you. He loved music, and bad jokes."

"Hey! My jokes aren't bad." He smiled though. "We lived on the outskirts of a smaller city up the coast from here. Near the old holiday village? Dad used to work in the funfair there, during the summer. I used to help out. We'd all pitch in with these mad stage shows. All ancient jokes and silly voices. Real end of the pier stuff."

"I never went there. We used to go camping in the mountains usually. Not near here though; often right on the other side of the country. We went to Greece once, and to Egypt. My mother wanted to see the ruins. That was our last holiday together."

"Ours was abroad too." He hadn't bothered commiserating. They had both learned that that got them nowhere. Everybody had lost their parents; everybody knew how it felt. "We went to France." He grinned. "The food was great."

"You and your stomach."

"I know. My mother was a cook though. Maybe it goes with the territory."

"Mine worked in a shop. She used to think up intricate revenge plots against difficult customers. Once she even asked Dal's parents if they could suggest some really good poisons." She laughed. "She had them at it then too. Working out how they could poison the till receipts or something."

"My father said he used to plot ways to get at his awkward customers too. It must be something to do with working with the public." Sasha stretched languorously. The heather in the bed smelled nice, and made him relax even more. "What did Bray's parents do? Your baby might take after them too you know."

She frowned. "I don't know. I think he went to a private school, so they probably had a fair amount of money, but he never talks about them. To be honest we've never had much of a chance to talk about anything. At first, before we became a couple, we didn't really talk at all - except to make plans for the tribe. Then I left and didn't see him for a few months - then we were fighting the Chosen, and there was the city to rebuild, and then Ebony getting out of control, and-- Well, we never really talked about ourselves. About me sometimes, and Dal. After he died. Never really about Bray."

"Well I'm sure there's plenty of time." He hesitated, wanting to say it right. "I mean, I'm sure he's okay. Still alive. You'll be able to find out everything you want when you meet up again."

"Yeah." She stared up at the darkened ceiling, and the only slightly less darkened sky that showed through the many large holes. Guilt nagged at her. She had hardly thought about Bray properly all day. He was out there, trapped in the city, a prisoner of Tribe Fury as far as she knew - and here was she, carrying his child but thinking of other things. Other people, and places, and times. Sasha touched her shoulder.

"It's okay, Amber." As always he seemed to know what she was thinking. "You can't think about him all the time. And you can always make up for it when you're back with him again, right? You and him and the baby."

"Yeah." She wondered how hard it had been for him to say that, then settled back down on the bed, resolved to start making real plans. Sooner or later her resting would have to be over. Sooner or later, if she was ever going to find out what had really happened to Bray, she was going to have to enter the city. She might as well start thinking about it now. A gentle breeze blew the scent of crushed heather to her, and with it a wave of unexpected sleepiness. She yawned.

"Night Amber." Sasha was already thinking about sleep. Of course - he didn't do planning, or even worrying as a rule. He just slept, or played, or ate. It wasn't a way of life that she could ever embrace - but as she tried to bring her mind back to her plans and her responsibilities, she found that she could hardly make the thoughts connect. Everything seemed to blur, the tension began to leave her, her eyes drifted slowly shut. After only a few more seconds she was fast asleep.

Chapter Text

They set out from the Chosen's underground headquarters in more of a drawn out ramble than the tight knit group they had been before. There had been a mild mutter of dissent amongst the members of the Chosen at the idea of allowing Bray and the others to go free, but such was the Guardian's hold over his followers that there had been no real argument. They stood in a straggly line to see their leader depart, standing with their heads bowed and their hands hidden by the cuffs of their robes, all muttering prayers to Zoot that the Guardian would be kept safe. Bray glowered at their words, but said nothing. Ebony led the way out.

"We thought we'd be going back empty-handed," commented Pride as they left the furnished chambers. "We did better than we thought we were going to."

"Yeah." Lex was trying to focus on that too. It wasn't exactly a great feeling to be returning home with the Guardian in tow, especially since, in every way that mattered, they owed him their lives. He wondered how the others back at the Mall would react to his appearance; particularly Tai-San, who had once seemed to have feelings for him. Maybe they would get lucky, and somebody from Tribe Fury would see those waving blond locks as a perfect target. Although the Chosen pair had changed out of their white robes, the clothes they had opted to wear instead were hardly less ostentatious, particularly in the Guardian's case. Luke at least had avoided the bright white that presented such a convenient target, though the blue he wore instead was bright enough. Beneath his velvet suit, the Guardian wore a flowing white shirt with frilled cuffs and an embroidered front, which made him look faintly like a pop star. It certainly wasn't especially effective as camouflage, even if the black of the suit itself was a good start. He wasn't very good at moving quietly and slowly, and at sticking to the shadows, either, however hard Lex tried to explain the necessity for such things. The Guardian liked to be seen; it simply wasn't in his nature to be inconspicuous. When Luke tried to persuade him to do as Lex suggested, the Guardian looked as though he had been asked to dance naked for the members of his mother's old bridge club.

"I've hidden before," was all that he would say on the matter, though he did comply in the end. "Crawled through mud and bushes on the run from half the city. It's not an experience I plan to repeat." Lex gritted his teeth and thought about the stores they had been given. A silver lining to every cloud... Well, nearly every cloud. Bray was still simmering, and the bulging bag of baby supplies that he still carried, along with a second bag full of the Chosen's donated food, didn't seem able to cool his temper. Riding on his skateboard, almost invisible in the half light of the late evening, he drifted off ahead on his own, with Ebony trying to catch up. Luke mooched along some way behind the rest of them, weighed down by food supplies he had been anxious to help to carry, and apparently unwilling to be a part of the main group. Lex didn't blame him. It couldn't be easy to be thrust back into the company of the Mall Rats after everything that had happened.

"I don't like being strung out like this." Pride looked around, searching for some hidden threat. "It makes us too easy to pick off."

"I know." Lex squinted ahead. Bray had slowed, and was drifting along on his skateboard with Ebony walking alongside him. They looked as though they were talking, but he couldn't imagine what about. They hadn't spoken much since Bray had discovered Ebony's part in Amber's disappearance all those months ago, after the tribe's trek to Eagle Mountain. There had been enmity and antagonism between them ever since, but now they seemed to be talking in earnest. For some reason it made Lex nervous, although he couldn't really imagine them doing anything that he would have cause to worry about. The Guardian seemed rather more interested in them, but if he had his suspicions or maybe just machinations, Lex didn't want to think about that, either. He shifted his load, shut his mind to dawdling Lukes, glowering Guardians and muttering others, and thought about nothing but Tai-San. She was worth thinking about. The rest was not.

They took a tortuous route back to the Mall. Lex had lost his bearings after taking the detour underground, and although Pride was still looking confident, he didn't seem to know where they were either. Always thinking of the day when he might return to his own people, he had never made any determined efforts to map out the city properly within his mind; something that he would have done immediately in a rural setting. He frowned at some of the landmarks, and wondered at the inexhaustible supply of new sights. Just how big was the city, and how many parts of this one region could there be that he had not yet seen? It bothered him, for it made him feel small, something that even the biggest and most wide open places outside the city never did.

"It's pretty quiet," he commented, as they turned down yet another alley, past yet another old office block. A burnt out hulk of a car marked the entrance to the alley, its already scarred body pocked by the newer holes of gunfire. Lex nodded.

"I thought we'd have seen somebody by now," he admitted. "Even just from a distance. There's no way they've stopped patrolling. They can't believe that they have everybody."

"False sense of security," muttered the Guardian, sounding rather as though he had been thinking, and part of his thoughts had managed to speak themselves out loud. Lex frowned.

"Huh?"

"What?" The would-be dictator saw the two pairs of eyes frowning at him, and shrugged. "It's what I'd do. What I did do. You want to get the people you haven't already got, so you make them think you're giving up trying. You ease up on the patrols, leave some sections of the city alone for a few nights. Lull the locals into a false sense of security."

"Then you strike," completed Pride, with distaste. "Charming."

"It's war." The Guardian flashed him a smile, all sparkle and carefully measured charisma. "They want the city. They're not going to play it fair. With their strength and firepower why should they bother?"

"True. I suppose." It did make perfect sense of course; it was just that neither Lex nor Pride liked the idea of such tricks being played; especially if there was any chance of being caught out by them themselves. Up ahead, though, leading the way with confidence, Bray and Ebony showed no sign of falling for any trickery. They were moving carefully, dividing the surrounding area up between them so that it was easier to watch out for any nasty surprises. Bray was no longer skating, and was instead walking as surreptitiously as the two bulky bags would allow. Lex wished that the Guardian and Luke would be half so careful.

"Pirates' territory." Ebony had been muttering a running commentary of the tribes that had once owned the areas they were walking through. It was a litany of the oppressed and displaced.

"The Pirates don't count," Bray told her. "You got rid of them, not the Chosen or Tribe Fury."

"I think we sold most of them to out of towners for slave labour." She sounded almost pleased with herself, and probably was. No doubt they had fetched a good price. "You think there's anybody in these buildings now?"

"Probably. They're still all in one piece. Somebody's bound to be using some of them." He shrugged. "But what's it matter? They can't exactly get on the phone and tell Tribe Fury about us."

"We don't know that. The Furies have walkie-talkies, we know that much. Maybe they hand them out to their new recruits."

"If you're going to think like that, we're never going to go anywhere." He couldn't help staring around though, searching darkened windows for a sight of an unknown onlooker. There were a lot of buildings with windows into this latest alley, and only a fraction of them were boarded up. It didn't look as though the area had been properly inhabited though, for as they walked on they passed a huge skull and crossbones painted on one wall. It was a relic of the days of the Pirates, and any serious new gangs would have removed it. Maybe the place still was empty after all.

"Maybe I'm being too cautious." For her there might have been ghosts of course, adding to her unease. Echoes of guilt, over what had happened to the tribe that had used to live here? Bray didn't think that he would ever be able to believe that. "But I can't help thinking that we're being watched."

"Yeah. It does feel like it." Again he scanned the buildings, but again he failed to see anything suspicious. The windows were empty, the visible sections of roof clean of spies and gunmen. "We're pretty vulnerable right now though, and we all know it. It must be making us jumpy."

"The others are catching up. We should wait for them. Go as a unit from now on. We're heading into areas where the Furies have been more active. Back towards the main roads. We shouldn't be so strung out."

"Yeah." He shot a glance back over his shoulder, towards the ever nearer Guardian. The big blond was smiling placidly, eyes shining as though he were pleased to be there; pleased to be among them. Even without his hatred of the leader of the Chosen, Bray still wouldn't have believed that expression of warmth and good cheer. Luke's warning still echoed in his head, as well as his memories of earlier times; being a prisoner of the Chosen back at the Mall. The Guardian would kill him if he could, once all of this was over. Kill him or do something worse.

"Trouble?" Catching them up as they slowed to a halt, Lex looked about for signs of whatever threat might have caused them to stop. Bray shook his head.

"Just waiting for you. It's open terrain for a while now. We need to know what we're doing."

"There's no better way? We've had good cover until now. I'd prefer that to continue." Pride didn't like the idea of breaking cover when it was too dark to be sure that they were alone. Bray shook his head.

"We've chosen the best route we could. We've gone the longest way, through the kind of streets it's less likely anybody will be watching. Now we have to go into the open for a while. There were a couple of alleys that we could have used once, but they're impassable nowadays. Gas explosion in the early days I think."

"We should have stuck to the tunnels." Luke was nervous, a fairly common state for him. Ebony shook her head.

"The tunnels around the Mall are too small for us to get down with this much to carry. The bigger ones were blocked off by Zoot, and you're not telling me you lot have opened up that many."

"No." The Guardian seemed to find her words amusing. "We haven't been out that way. Not that it didn't occur to us."

"I'll bet." Lex went to the end of the alley, peering out into the dark street beyond. Smashed streetlights that would once have lit the whole area stood as thin silhouettes at regular intervals. "How about sewers? Using some of these buildings as a short cut?"

"There's no sewer entrance here. I haven't seen a manhole in ages." Pride was all eyes, hating this inactivity. He felt much more of a target when standing still.

"And the buildings are no good, either. There's no access from one to another, and they only have doors and windows on two sides." Ebony knew that well enough; it had been the reason why the Pirates had thought that their dwellings would be easy to defend, but it had become the reason why they had been so easily taken. They had been trapped, without any way out.

"Then we'd better get it over with I guess." Lex grinned crookedly. "What are the chances that they're out there? I mean, they don't know we're here, right?"

"Sure. Why would they be watching that bit of road?" Luke was itching to get on the move. He wanted to be safe inside the Mall, away from these dark and dangerous streets. "They haven't seen us so far."

"We hope." Ebony offered him the same dazzling smile that she had so often turned on her victims in the past. "But I agree with Lex. We're standing here like lemons, and it's getting us nowhere. We either go, or we turn back and take an even longer route home."

"If we do that it'll be dawn before we get back, right? I mean, it seems like we've been walking for hours." Lex edged around the corner, standing at the side of the street beyond. It was one of the old main roads; the kind that parades marched down, and cars got stuck in during rush hour. A place of famous name shops with cheap flats above; but a sea of broken glass nowadays. All that was left in the shops were the cash registers, and the flats had fared little better.

"Careful," Bray told him. "There's sure to be somebody on guard out there. It's a main thoroughfare, and they're all watched over to some degree." He eased out to stand beside Lex, muscles screaming their readiness for sudden movement. "One guard alone we should be able to get past, even if he does see us." He shot a glance back at the Guardian in his gaudy shirt, hair practically aglow in the moonlight. "Well, he's sure to see us. They're not slouches."

"So he'll get in touch with his friends, they'll move to cut us off... I'm not liking this plan." Pride lowered his burden of foodstuffs to the ground, glad to be rid of it for a moment. His insistence at still carrying the metal barrel meant for Jack's windmill gave him far greater a load to carry, and his arms had been protesting for some time. "Is there a better plan?"

"We can't run very fast with all this stuff," pointed out Luke. Lex stared around at the seemingly empty street, wondering if Bray were right, and there really was somebody out there standing watch. If so then it was possible that they had already been seen; and there was no sense in standing around any longer.

"We can't leave the food behind," he pointed out. "We've got to take it. If I was a sentry I'd be high up. One of the roofs probably. That means right now we're probably invisible, unless he's on that one just opposite. Assuming that he isn't we'll be alright edging along the side of this building towards that cross-roads. Then which way do we take? Heading east?"

"Turn right by those traffic lights." Bray had his eyes closed, trying to remember quickly. "There's an entrance into the back of an old bakery, and we can cut through that building into an alley. From there it's a straight line to that old street that runs behind the buildings opposite the Mall. We're less than a mile from home now I think, but that makes it even more awkward."

"True. We can't let any sneaky invisible guards see where we're heading." Lex was taking charge in the way that he liked to whenever he saw a security matter rearing its head. "Okay. We keep undercover until we hit those cross-roads, then we make a run for it. Don't make any noise, don't stop for anything; and if we're seen, split up. It won't be hard to find the way back to the Mall now, but take a roundabout route if you can." He cast a speculative eye over them all, with their heavy loads, and wished that he had as much faith in them as he had in himself. Bray and Ebony would be okay, and Pride too - but the Guardian and Luke might wind up leading the enemy straight to the Mall's front door. They didn't even know about the new secret entrances, and he didn't feel inclined to waste further time explaining now. He took a deep breath. "Okay, everybody ready?"

"If this is the only way we're getting home, we'll have to be ready, won't we." Ebony was already edging away down the road, keeping to the shadows and unable to shake the feeling that she was being watched. "But next time we decide to leave the Mall on a mission, we give up and go home the minute the first thing goes horribly wrong. We don't wait to get a hat trick first."

"Nervous?" Bray was following her, eyes everywhere but seeing nothing. The moon had gone, and without it the darkness was too complete in the city these days; had been for a long time now. That could work with them or against them; and in his experience it usually went against. Tribe Fury were so well equipped they might even have night vision goggles.

"Nervous?" It sounded like she was echoing his words, but in actuality was merely showing her outrage. "I don't get nervous, Bray. I just get careful."

"So do I." The Guardian was coming next, as close to Bray as he could be, head turned towards his hated enemy. He was smiling, in much the way favoured by Racha, but there was none of the Fury's warmth in his eyes. "Feeling exposed, Bray? Like the whole of the city is watching? Maybe they are."

"Maybe." Bray turned his head away, determined not to look at his tormentor. "But if they are it's you they'll be looking at." He quickened his pace slightly, bumping against Ebony in the dark. Following on behind the Guardian, Pride hissed for silence, but the conversation had already come to an end. The Guardian was merely smirking now, his fun momentarily over.

"I wish I had a rucksack." Renewing the noise almost as soon as it had ceased, Luke struggled to keep pace with the others whilst simultaneously holding his heavy bag. It knocked against Pride's back unexpectedly, and the taller boy almost stumbled. The metal barrel he was carrying scraped against the wall.

"Shut up!" In his desire for silence Lex almost spoke too loudly himself. "Be bloody careful can't you!"

"Shut up yourself." Pride reached back to try to steady Luke, finding himself wishing for the calm and capable lieutenant who had been his enemy during the days of the Chosen's rule. Insufferable though he could sometimes be, he would have been of more use to them all now than the edgy bundle of nerves he seemed to have become since losing his faith. At the back Lex growled something indistinct.

"Just get a move on." Ebony didn't know what was going on behind her, but she could hear something, and that in itself was a bad thing. They were growing nearer to the cross-roads now, and she could see the road that was to take them all back to the Mall. So near, she told herself; so close to their ultimate goal. The sensation of being watched was growing with every step, but she was willing to believe that that was just tension. Tension and the desire to be safe inside, and finally able to relax. Her attempts at self-reassurance failed her though, and she began to slow with each step. Bray bumped into her again, taken by surprise.

"Ebony?" he hissed. She glanced back at him, able to see nothing more than a familiar shadow.

"Do you really think there's a guard posted along here?" she asked. His head turned away from her, looking towards the tall buildings. In daylight he had seen a figure standing on most of the tallest ones at one time or another. It was standard practice, and nights were no different. They had their floodlights then, and they turned them on whenever something demanded attention. He had watched them sweeping other streets with the powerful beams, and heard the bullets that were sent chasing after the light. Why would this place be any different? It was just a question of where the guard was posted, not whether he was posted at all.

"There's a guard," he told her, and tried to hurry her on. The tension was killing him too, and he wanted to be back at the Mall as much as she did. With every heartbeat he expected a floodlight to crash on; expected to suddenly find himself visible to everybody nearby. The fact that no light did come on only seemed to make it feel more inevitable.

"I hate this." Ebony didn't like the idea of being caught like a rat in a trap. It hurt her pride as well as having more dangerous connotations. "Creeping around my own city the way people used to creep around to avoid me. It's not right!"

"Ssh." He hurried her on even faster, trying not to stumble on loose shards of glass and bits of broken window frame. So close to the cross-roads now. So close to the place where they would have to break cover and make a run for it; where they would have their last chance to get past any unseen onlookers. So close.

They ran at the same time, as though there had been some secret signal, dashing for the small road that intersected with the main one. Pride struggled stubbornly with the ungainly barrel, and Bray found it almost as hard to balance the two heavy bags and the skateboard that all crashed relentlessly against his sides. Luke tripped on something in the middle of the road, but stayed upright. The Guardian helped him, for whatever reason, supporting him as he stumbled, and pulling him onward to help increase his speed in spite of his load. It seemed pointless to try stammering his thanks, for the Guardian never did anything just from the goodness of his heart.

They were in the other street then, heading back into greater shadow, trying not to relax, trying not to slow. Lex grinned his feral grin and risked a glance back the way they had come. It was impossible to see anything of course, but that impenetrable blackness, with no sign of pursuit within it, seemed strangely encouraging nonetheless. He gestured ahead, breathless more from the tension of it all than from the exertion.

"Come on," he gasped, already thinking wonderful thoughts about Tai-San. It made him pull ahead, Luke moving with him in his sudden determination to get away from the Guardian's unwelcome hands. Pride kept pace, looking forward to being able to set down his burden, and give his strained arms the rest that they deserved. He wasn't sure why Ebony was hanging back; thought that she was turning away to look in some other direction, and couldn't understand why she should be doing that; failed to remember that they were by no means yet out of danger. It shouldn't have been a surprise to hear the cry of warning that started to ring out behind him, but it was. It shouldn't have been a shock to hear what had to be alien footsteps slapping against the tarmac - but it was. His heart had barely begun to sink when the street was flooded with light.

"Scatter!" Lex's voice was almost drowned by the burst of automatic gunfire that made all of them dive for cover. There was no cover. They were in a narrow street without recessed doorways, without dustbins, without anything that might have made good places to hide. There was no way to scatter immediately; no other roads leading off. They tried to run, but when a small metal object sailed overhead, and hit the ground with an explosion that made the ground shake, they all ground to a halt. Lex spun in a brief circle. There seemed to be nowhere to hide - the light was blinding him, trapping him; the footsteps were echoing closer; dust was falling from the residue of the grenade explosion. He spat obscenities in a gruff voice, then threw caution to the wind and made a break for it. Bullets scratched the tarmac near to his feet, but he ran on anyway. The others were doing the same, and he hoped that they were all still alright. All of them, even the Guardian. He didn't want anybody to be gunned down.

"Lex! Go left!" Pride's voice was a surprise; a clear sound cutting through the ringing in his ears. He turned left automatically, not knowing why until he saw the big window that gaped before him. The glass was gone of course, save for a few shards clinging around the edge. It was like a door, leading to-- well, that much he could only guess at. Could only hope for the best. Gathering his strength for the leap that would take him over the low sill, he ducked his head, clung tightly to the food he was determined not to lose, and hurled himself into the blackness beyond the window. Somebody else came after him; perhaps a third. After that all he could hear was gunfire. He slipped on rubble underfoot as he tried to turn around and see who else was with him. Friend or foe? It was so dark after the bright light outside. His eyes danced with spots and sparks that prevented him from seeing anything of any use. A hand grabbed at his arm and pulled.

"Come on!" Pride's voice.

"The others--" He wasn't sure who the others were. Which of them were here in this building? Pride was pulling him onwards.

"I can't see a thing, Lex! I don't know where anybody is! Just run!" They were slithering together then, struggling to get away from whoever might be out in the street, or coming after them. Gunfire echoed again, horribly loud. Lex half turned, saw - what? A figure, blond hair lit by a halo of light; another figure, darker, slimmer, bearing a long plait of hair that reached past his shoulder, in contrast to the shortness of the hair on the rest of his head. A third figure too perhaps? Small? Female? They were running, but not for long. As Lex watched, slowing to a halt even though he knew that it was stupid, he saw another explosion burst into life. He didn't really hear it, or if he did the sound didn't register. He just saw the wall of flame that seemed to erupt from the ground, cutting off whatever retreat the three familiar silhouettes might have had. There was rubble falling from all around, and the ground was shaking beneath his feet. Pride was yelling, pulling him on, telling him to hurry before the building crashed down around them, but he resisted for a moment. Resisted long enough to see one of the three fall. The smallest one he thought, though by then it was hard to be sure of anything. Bricks seemed to be falling everywhere now; a chain reaction started off by the explosion. Everything was shaking, and he saw flames dance up, heard more gunfire, saw the other two figures fall, or thought he did. Then another explosion turned everything he could see into a churning mass of flame and falling stone. Pride was dragging him away and screaming in his ear, but he couldn't hear any of it, and couldn't really even feel the ground beneath his feet as he ran. Dust blinded him and the blood roared in his ears. He didn't notice when they reached open air again, and began to run more normally. Didn't notice the grit in his mouth, the stones in his shoes, the heavy load in his arms that sheer pride would not allow him to lose. All that he was aware of was a last, lingering image burned into the back of his mind. Three figures; three people known to him; caught in explosions and gunfire. Three figures falling. Beyond that the world was nothing but confusion.

Chapter Text

Ebony didn't remember being knocked off her feet; just clawing her way back up again. Her eyes stung from the clouds of brick dust, and she could hardly breathe for the same reason. Her head swam.

"You're surrounded!" The youthful voice was filled with authority, but when Ebony looked around she couldn't see who had spoken. The fierce glare of the floodlight was no help in the midst of all the dust, and she realised then that the surrounding members of Tribe Fury probably couldn't see her any better than she could see them. She suppressed a cough that might have given away her position, and then looked about as best she could, through streaming eyes, to see if she was alone. She wasn't. At her feet the Guardian was beginning to move, knocking aside chunks of stone that had partially buried him. He frowned up at her.

"Ebony? What-?"

"Ssh. They can't see us." Nearby there was the sound of a loud rumble, and she thought that she felt the ground move. "They're keeping back. They don't think it's safe to come any closer."

"I'm not surprised. Sounds like half the buildings nearby are about to come down." The Guardian made it to his feet, then looked about with a frown, "I can't see a thing. Where's Bray?"

"Bray? I don't know. I don't know where anybody is. I saw Lex and Luke running into one of the buildings I think..."

"Then they probably got crushed." The Guardian sounded completely unconcerned by that possibility. "But Bray was right next to me when I fell. We should--" He broke off at another rumble, flinching slightly as a new deluge of dust and fragments of stone came down upon them. "We have to move. Tribe Fury have good reason not to come any closer. I think these buildings are going to come down."

"Move where? We don't know where they are. We could be running right into them." She turned in a circle, trying to see something - anything - through the thick, churning dust. Her foot struck something as she moved, and she frowned in surprise. That had not been a stone. "That felt--"

"You've found somebody." He was crouching down then, fumbling through chunks of stone and brick, coughing quietly as the dust blew up into his face. A gunshot rang out, but it passed over their heads. Somebody shouted.

"We really don't have much time," Ebony muttered. The Guardian nodded his regal, blond head.

"I know." He was still fumbling about in the rubble - then with a sudden heave lifted up the unconscious form of a very familiar person. Brown hair flopped forward over a face recently returned to its old, paint-free state. Ebony caught hold of a dusty lapel, and felt for a pulse at the neck.

"Alive." She was all business then, helping the Guardian to haul the slumped figure up from the ground. Part of her wondered why the Guardian was trying to help out, and wasn't attempting to run off and leave Bray behind. Old proverbs about gift horses and mouths notwithstanding, she couldn't help but be suspicious.

"Where do we go from here?" Lifting Bray up into his arms with barely an effort, the Guardian turned about to look for a likely direction in which to flee. Ebony shrugged.

"I got a bit disorientated in that blast. I think we came from that direction." She pointed uncertainly. "But they seemed to be all around us so quickly. We might make it into one of the buildings, but I don't know that I'd like to risk it. It might not be safe."

"It's that or get taken in by Tribe Fury." The Guardian shrugged as best he could, and the skateboard that hung on its strap around Bray's shoulders rattled lightly. "Pick a direction."

"Right." She thought that was where the more robust of the surrounding buildings had been, but since she no longer had a clue which direction was which, she didn't really know where to begin. The Guardian nodded though, apparently satisfied with her judgement.

"You were Zoot's greatest supporter during his lifetime," he said, sounding just like a priest again." He'll guide you now."

"You think?" She glanced at Bray, not believing that he was safe being carried by his hated enemy. "Well he'd better do a good job then. We'll have to make it quick. Once they hear that we're moving, we'll be done for if we don't move fast."

"I don't think so." He was getting a better grip on Bray, who was beginning to stir. "Just trust in Zoot. Trust - and run." And run he did, hurtling through the thick haze of dust as though answering some sudden shout of command. Galvanised into action by his movement, unwilling to be left behind, she ran after him, unable to breathe in the crumbling atmosphere. A great shout started up, and gunshots suddenly ripped into life once again; an echoing cacophony of sound that came from somewhere invisible. Ricochets zipped off stone, presenting greater dangers, but Ebony was thinking only of grenades. A gunshot might not be fatal, but a grenade, right now, could not fail to be. Above her she knew that buildings towered, and if the rumblings and quakings she had felt were anything to judge by, some of those buildings were none too secure. If the explosion didn't get her and her companions, the collapsing buildings would.

"In here." The Guardian caught her arm, dragging her into the lobby of some old building. There was dust falling from the ceiling, and the place felt less secure than the world outside, for all its grand, stout pillars. The air was clearer though, and she choked and coughed, tearing eyes helping to clear away some of the dust that had so painfully obscured her vision. Bray was struggling, though weakly, and the Guardian set him down on his feet.

"What the hell-?" began Bray, but a huge shout made him break off in mid sentence. He turned, frowning; saw dark shapes coalesce outside the ruined front of the building. Tribe Fury. Clearly they had decided that if the terrain was safe for their quarry then it must also be safe for them. They looked inhuman, wearing goggles to protect their eyes from the dust. One of them raised a rifle, pointing it through the gaping hole that had once been a door. It didn't seem to be pointed at anybody in particular - which was when Ebony realised that it wasn't a rifle at all. Part of her mind was screaming A bazooka?! The rest was screaming Don't be stupid - how could it be a bazooka? How could any kid possibly have one of those... She drew in a deep breath, mind still fighting over the two opposing concepts, wrestling with the idea that she should really be running away. Ahead she saw a lick of flame, and realised somewhere deep inside that it really was a bazooka, and that the kid holding it had just pulled the trigger. There was a rushing, roaring sound; a shout of warning from somewhere outside the building. She found that strangely funny. Apparently the rest of the Furies couldn't believe that he had fired the thing either. Some of them were running, but everything was in slow motion.

"Get back!" The Guardian reacted when she was beginning to think that she herself would not. A powerful hand caught the back of her shirt even as a second was doing the same to Bray, and a great, unexpected strength was dragging them both back, running with them, hurtling at what could not have nearly enough speed towards the back of the lobby. There was a door there - a door that seemed impossibly far away. A gaping, glass-less hole of a door beyond which figures moved outside. Not more of Tribe Fury? But there was no choice, and certainly nowhere else to run to, for behind them something was already exploding. The grenade had hit one of the pillars in the lobby, obliterating it instantly in a flash of white fire and clouds of thick, white dust. A tremendous rumble echoed throughout the building, and great chunks of the ceiling began to fall. The fire was spreading too - rushing outwards in a circle of intense heat from the point of impact, thick black smoke stretching upwards and outwards and downwards. Ebony thought that she could smell her hair beginning to singe. Her feet slipped and skidded, but she was fast enough to keep up with the Guardian's demanding pace. She couldn't hear anything anymore - didn't know if he was saying anything, or if Bray was, or if Tribe Fury was coming after them. Didn't even know if she was saying anything herself. It was impossible to know anything for sure.

"Keep going." The Guardian sounded as though his adrenalin was finally giving out, but he was pushing them through the door now, so that both Ebony and Bray felt the rough stone of the door edge graze their arms. They were stumbling then, past anonymous figures who were also running; past great tongues and fists of flame and stone and dust. There was a huge sound; a roaring, pummelling rage of noise, and they were still running, all of them, away from it and whatever was causing it. Ebony couldn't see a thing, for the dust was thicker than ever, and even though the flames were giving fiery red light enough to illuminate the whole street, it was all swallowed up by the clasping, grasping, suffocating, evil dust. She couldn't breathe. She didn't think any of them could. Not until, with the last few staggering steps that seemed to be available to her, to the Guardian, to Bray, they at last reached a place where the dust was nothing more than a hot, chalky taste; where the smoke was a burning, unpleasant smell, but where the heat had dissipated. The Guardian let go of her then, though she had long since ceased to realise that he was holding her at all. She sagged against the nearest building and looked back, staring at the sight she had known that she would see.

The building they had run through was gone, along with one or two others by the look of it. She wondered which one Lex and the others had escaped into, and wondered how she would feel if she allowed herself to believe that they might be dead. If they were still back there then they must be dead, that much was clear. There was so much rubble, so much dust, so much noise, smoke and flame. It made everything alien, and horribly lethal.

"They're still coming," coughed Bray, who looked even more shell-shocked than she felt. Being rescued by the Guardian would do that to you, she supposed, and even in the midst of all this, couldn't help wondering why the Chosen's unpleasant leader should have done such a thing. There was no time for more than the most cursory suspicions however, for Bray was right. Shots were still ringing out, and ricochets danced off the rubble close to her feet. She moved back. The Furies were not yet advancing properly, but they were still shooting, sweeping the area with small and powerful beams of light that must easily have picked out the dusty survivors of the buildings' collapse. There were others here too, though, Ebony remembered - and they were shooting as well. She wondered if she could come up with a speech of surrender that would allow her to keep her self-respect intact as well as her life - then realised that those others were not shooting at her. They were shooting back at Tribe Fury, with guns that were the match of the Furies' own. She blinked about in surprise. There were a lot of them now; people no doubt brought out of hiding by the noise of the one-sided battle. People dressed in loose grey jump suits bedecked with chains torn from bicycles. People with helmets and goggles, and a welter of wild, jubilant, swirling face paint that almost matched the design she herself had never ceased to wear. Her mouth fell open. Locos. By all that was holy - Locos. One of them was grinning at her in a lopsided sort of welcome, from a face blessed with eyes that glowed with psychosis, and teeth that were almost entirely lost to hard fought battles. He was giving her a gun, and clapping her on the back, and she felt the most wonderful, glorious, unbelievable sensation of joy and excitement rushing through her. Battle lust. Adrenalin. Comradeship. The need to fight and the love of fighting. It was like a lit match to the touch paper of her soul. Gone was the fatigue; the worry. She could no longer taste or smell the choking dust and suffocating smoke; couldn't hear the Guardian muttering joyful prayers of thanks to Zoot. Couldn't really even hear Bray telling her to stop. Stop what? She barely knew that she was firing the gun, joining in with the fire fight, as flushed and as exultant in the danger and the bloodlust and the badness of it all as the brethren she had so suddenly been hurled back amongst. She didn't know a thing until the gunfire died away in stops and starts and the throng of Locos began to withdraw. The Furies were no longer firing. They were either dead or giving in gracefully, pulling back to reconsider their options. Only then did Ebony lower her gun, and recover the wits that she had lost even before Lex and Pride had disappeared. She blinked around. The Guardian was standing stock still, head and arms thrown back, thanking Zoot for the gift of his loyal followers in such an hour of need. The Locos were crowding around, ignoring the praying madman, welcoming her back amongst them with an enthusiasm that she had never thought to hear from them again. They had hardly split up on good terms, that last time, and she had thought for so long that many of them must have been dead. And Bray, standing at the back, staring at everything with the sort of horror that he had hoped never to feel again. So much carnage. So much chaos. And all, as ever, in the name of the brother he still yearned for the chance to remember simply as Martin. Dear sweet, mad little Martin - hanging over all of this as the vengeful, furious ghost of Zoot. Bray was shaking his head, staring from the Guardian to Ebony with a sick look on his face, but Ebony had no time to consider his feelings. She felt as though she had just been handed her own army, all clamouring for her to ride at their head. Queen again, if only, this time, over a few. She wanted to laugh. The Guardian already was laughing. So were many of the Locos as they started to escort her away. She didn't look to see if Bray was following; didn't notice that the Locos had given him no choice. Drunk with power she didn't even bother to wonder if Tribe Fury were following too. This was power. This was chaos. She could almost believe, in this supremely satisfying and extraordinary moment, that the Guardian's prayers had been answered. She could almost believe that Zoot really was watching over them, ruling supreme. Lord and master of all. She really wouldn't have been all that surprised.

Chapter Text

They ran blindly for what felt like hours, never sure whether there was really any danger of pursuit. No further gunshots rang out, at least in their immediate vicinity, and there were no more explosions nearby. No more grenades, no more floodlights. Eventually, by an unspoken agreement, the three fugitives sagged into the cover of a partly tumbled wall, and collapsed. Lex pushed the food away, staring at it in a strange sort of loathing. The food was safe. Great. What about the friends he had had to leave behind?

"They're dead, aren't they." Luke's voice, slightly shaky, so exactly mirrored the train of Lex's own thoughts that the older boy was immediately angry. He would have lashed out, if he had been entirely sure of making contact without needing to move too much.

"Of course they're not." Pride's voice sounded thick. Lex didn't respond.

"They're dead! Of course they're dead." Luke stumbled to his feet, wandering out into the middle of the road to stare back the way they had come. Everything was still in utter blackness, and it was impossible to see anything at all. The moon, which had disappeared before Tribe Fury's attack, still showed no sign of returning. They might have been anywhere, and would never have known it.

"Shut up. Keep your voice down and get out of sight." Lex thought about getting up and dragging the other boy back under cover, but really couldn't be bothered. He wasn't especially tired; he kept himself in good enough physical condition for a long and desperate run to be no great feat for him; but reaction to what had just happened was beginning to set in. He thought that his hands might be shaking, and was glad that nobody else could see.

"The Guardian." Luke was grinning, widely and madly, his eyes unusually bright. Again it was something that nobody could see, but something in his voice, now a hoarse whisper, alerted Pride. He rose to his feet.

"Luke, calm down."

"I am calm." The boy turned to face him, blue hair flopping down over his face. "I just-- It's him, Pride. You don't understand. I'm sorry about the others. Ebony and Bray. They didn't deserve it, Bray especially, but him. You don't know what this means."

"They're not dead." Lex also got to his feet. "They're still alive. They might need rescuing, but if they do that's okay. We've rescued Bray before. From worse than Tribe Fury too."

"From more immediate danger, perhaps. From worse than them? I don't know about that." Pride was staring into the middle distance, thinking of his horror at the sight of a crowd about to burn another human being to death. "But you're right. They're still alive, and we'll help them. Just not now. We have to get back to the Mall. Regroup. Think things through. There's nothing that we can do right now."

"Yeah." Lex hated to agree, even though he well knew that Pride was right. It would be crazy to try anything right now, when they were confused and tired and the world was still not making sense. Tribe Fury would be on the alert, and there were too many of them all in one place at the moment. Too many guns, too many grenades - not to mention that infernal floodlight, turning the pitch darkness into brightest day. "We'll get these stores back to the others I guess. Maybe get something to eat. Rest for a bit. Then... what? Go back and get the rest of the Chosen to help us? The manpower might be useful."

"Yeah, but they'd never do it, would they. If we go in there and tell them that the Guardian has been captured by Tribe Fury they'd slit our throats soon as look at us. That or assume that if they came with us the same thing would happen to them. They'd never trust us."

"True. Especially once they find out that the Guardian is dead." Smiling crookedly, Luke ran that thought through and through his mind. The Guardian. Dead. It sounded wonderful, and he couldn't whisper it often enough. Pride slapped him none too gently across the back of the head.

"Shut up," he warned, in a voice rather more gruff than his usual steady tone. "We don't talk like that. Optimism is one of our strengths."

"Optimism? You think imagining that the Guardian still being alive is optimism? It doesn't feel that way to me. You have no idea what he's like, Pride. You saw bits and pieces. Flashes. When you were in the Mall you saw a madman, yes - but you don't know how mad he is. Maybe nobody does. Maybe not even me. But I do know that I was trying to find happiness and freedom, and he dragged me into the sewers with a rope around my neck and refused to ever let me see daylight again. If it hadn't been for you coming, I'd still be in there, with no hope of ever getting out. I tried to leave him, you see. I turned my back on him. Tried to find something else for myself. He doesn't allow that."

"Well I'm sorry, but that's still no reason to hope that he's dead. If he's still alive, then Bray and Ebony are still alive, and we want that. They're our friends, and more. We need them, if we're going to have any chance of defeating Tribe Fury. We can't afford to lose a single person, even if that person is evil and insane."

"Yeah. Need them." Luke turned away slightly. "Not that things wouldn't be better for you too if they were dead. I know that you like Amber, and if Bray is dead--"

"Don't even say that." Pride wasn't often angered enough to want to hit somebody, but he had to rein in his fists now before flattening the smaller boy. "Nobody should ever wish another person dead unless they really mean it; and I don't believe that anybody could ever really mean something like that."

"Yeah, well you always were the flower power peace boy." Lex didn't know if he had meant to sound so antagonistic, but it came out that way regardless. Pride, as ever, seemed unconcerned.

"Let's just get back home," he said quietly, almost gently. Luke laughed shortly.

"Home." He sounded bitter. "Yeah, sure. Back to Ellie. Except she doesn't want anything more to do with me. Back to Jack, who hated me to start with. Back to--"

"Ellie isn't there. Most of them are gone. Disappeared by your lot or just left because of what you all did." Lex started to gather together the disparate collection of stores he had been carrying, ready once again for the off. There was bait in that short speech; the hope that Luke might say something about the Disappeared, or at the very least express some kind of regret; but Luke was past all of that. He had struggled with his guilt long enough to know that it was something he had to deal with himself; and asking for the forgiveness of others would get him nowhere. He didn't know where the missing members of the Mall Rats were, any more than he knew what had happened to the tribal leaders, following the Chosen's original take-over. He had tried to atone for his mistakes, and for those of the rest of the Chosen, but it had got him nowhere. It was a private thing now, and as far as he was concerned, it would have to remain that way.

"Where's Ellie gone?" He tried to make it sound like an idle question, but it felt as though his heart had dropped out through the bottom of his stomach. Lex didn't answer.

"We should get going," he said instead. "It might be dawn soon."

"We've got a little while yet." Pride scanned the uncooperative sky. "But you're right. I'm not sure how far off course we've gone. Does anybody know exactly where we are?"

"Course I bloody do. It's not just Bray that knows this city." Lex was immediately grumpy again, partly because he didn't know exactly where they were. "I think it's that way. East."

"That way's west, but it feels right." Pride offered him a small smile, but it was invisible of course in the darkness. "In relation to the way we've been going, I think we should probably head that way."

"That's what I said, isn't it?" Lex turned away. "We're looking for the old nail factory. It'll be the first obvious landmark. We should head for the back of the Mall though, and go in by a roundabout route. I'm not taking any chances."

"No. Course not." Pride was also gathering together his share of the stores. Luke did the same, partly through a sense of duty, and partly through a vaguely mechanical response to the actions of the others. Now that he was calming down after the adrenalin rush of the escape, he was beginning to feel rather ashamed. It hadn't been right to speak his feelings towards the Guardian aloud, nor to wish death on Bray and Ebony even if it would help to free him from his tormentor. Ever since breaking free of the Chosen he had been up and down; desperate to prove himself one minute, all but suicidal the next. Being dragged back into servitude by the Chosen had hardly helped things to sort themselves out in his mind.

"How do we rescue the others?" he asked, as they began to head off in the direction Lex and Pride had decided upon. Pride shrugged.

"See where they've been taken, think things through, do what seems right." It would have been nice if they had a few more people. He and Lex might be able to handle it, perhaps with the help of Tai-San, but a few more hands would have made him feel a good deal more confident. There were so few people that they could trust, however. So many mysterious tribes around the city, with who knew what allegiances. Only Bray seemed to know who most of them were; who was independent and who was now aligned to Tribe Fury. Even the ones who were independent were not necessarily trustworthy, nor likely to be inclined to help.

"There's a secret way into the hotel, if it helps." Luke was thinking back to his days as controller of Ebony's fledgling Mint, when she had been friendly towards him, and he had been trying to be useful. "Ebony showed me. There's an old paint factory, and it has a sort of drain that leads into the hotel cellar. Does now, anyway. I shouldn't think it was built that way."

"Might be of some use I suppose." Pride tried to picture the paint factory, and was rather of the opinion that it was too close to the hotel to be of any use. It would be too hard to reach with the number of guards that were likely to be around. Still, it was one more fact to be filed away; one more thing that might be useful eventually. Lex either didn't think so or didn't care, for he hushed them both impatiently. There were a time for the exchange of information, it seemed, and that time was not now. He wanted silence, and silence was what he got from then on; a hurried, breathless rush conducted without a sound, struggling through the burnt out carcasses of the warehouses and shops that surrounded their shopping mall home. It wasn't until they were in sight of the place that Lex spoke again.

"You see anything?" he asked. Pride shook his head. There was just about enough light to see the gesture now, for dawn was slowly beginning its approach.

"Nothing. But if you don't want to risk it..."

"No. We can't hide forever. Besides, who's going to be watching back here? That mob that came after us before are probably more than satisfied with what they've got."

"Yeah." Lex started to lead the way towards the Mall, keeping low, moving slowly, eyes on the alert. It wasn't easy to move that way with so much to carry, but the idea of not returning empty-handed was becoming an obsession. He had brought it this far; kept hold of it all this way. He'd be damned if he was going to lose it now when in every other way he was returning home in defeat. It wasn't easy to get the stores into the hotel, struggling over the low wall and through the little fire exit that was their back-up entrance and exit. There was nothing left after that but a slow, stumbling walk down the corridors, to the big hall that had been the centre of their world for so long. Luke slumped down on the wall of the fountain and closed his eyes, and after a moment Lex did the same. Only Pride remained standing. He had seen Trudy at the top of the stairs, and was filled with an urge not to look too defeated. Brady was probably too young to be affected by such things, but there was no sense in sending out too many bad vibes. Babies were sensitive to such things.

"Lex. Pride. Luke." She showed no surprise at seeing the blue-haired boy. Her voice was measured and even. Lex waved a hand in greeting, but didn't say anything.

"You've been gone a long time," she commented. They all knew that her eyes were scanning the room, searching for Bray, waiting for his appearance. "Where are the others?"

"Not here." Lex didn't want to explain anything more just yet. He stood up. "Tai-San?"

"Here." She was coming from somewhere on the ground floor, running towards him to greet him with a shaky hug. Jack was there too; all hostile glares at Luke and awkward silence in place of a welcome home. That was when Lex began to realise that there was something wrong. For Jack not to be excited at the sight of so many new stores, not to mention the metal barrel that Pride had struggled to bring so far, meant that something had to be amiss. His eyes narrowed.

"What's up?" he asked, wondering if members of Tribe Fury were about to pour out of hiding and surround them all. That would surely be the crowning glory to a dreadful day. Tai-San pulled back a little, looking from him to Pride and back again.

"I'm sorry Lex," she said in the end. "I don't know how it happened. We were asleep--"

"How what happened?" Pride took a few steps over to join them, intensity in his dark eyes. "What's wrong?"

"It's KC and Chloe." Trudy's shoulders were slumped, and she sat down on the top stair to better cradle the dozing Brady in her arms. "We've been looking for them everywhere, but they're not anywhere we can think of looking." She looked tired, just as the rest of them did. "They're not in the Mall anymore, either of them. They've gone."

Chapter Text

The Locos loved to fight. It was quite possibly their raison d'être, and if any of them were sorry that their city had been invaded by a powerful and militaristic enemy, it was hard to see it. Having kept quiet, licking their wounds and rebuilding their numbers during the era of the Chosen, they had clearly returned in style, and with their once ostracised queen now returned to their head they were truly rejuvenated. They swaggered about their decrepit, desolate HQ with all the confidence and self assurance of the victors in battle that they had always been in the past, drilling endlessly with their captured weapons, and performing with all the chaotic apposite of military discipline that could not help but be their style. Ebony was ecstatic, acting as though the war were already won, even though it had barely started, whilst the Guardian watched it all with undisguised delight. These people, even though they were one of the tribes he had once tried to destroy, were the followers of Zoot; the people who had actually marched alongside him, and listened to his manic attempts at speech making; something he himself could only dream about. To be amongst them seemed to him to be the perfect next step in whatever grand plan his twisted mind was lately envisaging. Bray didn't like to dwell on thoughts of that.

For Bray himself, the situation was rather different. He had no desire to be amongst the Locos, and no particular desire to be welcome amongst them. Their ways had never been his, and even now, when they shared a common goal, he couldn't help but be wary of them. He wanted to go back to the Mall, to rejoin Lex and the others, but that had been strictly forbidden. Ebony's doing, he suspected. It made a horrible kind of sense, for security had been tightened greatly since the night that the Mall Rats had been caught out and split up. Tribe Fury had divided the city up into new sectors, and thanks to the heavy saturation of border guards, travel between those sectors was almost impossible without the underground network of tunnels. The Mall, needless to say, was in another sector, and Ebony showed no interest in opening up more of the old tunnels in order to get there. There were other priorities, she said - and he could see her point. The Mall Rats hardly seemed indispensable just now, even if the extra manpower might have been useful. The Rats had made their plans and argued about how best to start a resistance - but all the time their old enemies had been getting that resistance underway, and winning real victories. It rankled to be outclassed by what amounted to a gang of mindless thugs, but at least for now they were on the right side. He watched them as they rehearsed for their coming war, throwing tennis balls as practice grenades, and shooting each other with old paint-balling guns found in some derelict clubhouse. Compared to the Mall Rats, with their talking and planning and inevitable squabbling; their hand to hand combat characterised by Lex's street brawling and Tai-San's Martial Arts; not to mention their habitual hiding in their fortified home; it seemed clear who was most likely to wrest control of the city away from Tribe Fury. The Mall Rats, after all, had never been a match for the Locos in the past.

For himself he had his own kind of drill - hand to hand combat, Mall Rat style. He wasn't the kind to use guns, and accepted that as a part of who he was, rather than the dangerous failing that the Locos seemed to feel it to be. He found himself a length of wood suitable as a staff, and practised alone - or with Ebony when she wasn't off being a leader of men. By night there were sorties into the realm of the enemy, stealing food and supplies, attempting various forms of sabotage, clashing with little bands of Furies. Bray went along, cutting electrical wires, filling petrol tanks with earth, pinning up posters intended to stir up the populace and make them turn on the invaders. They felt like minor tasks for the most part, but it was better than hiding in the Mall doing nothing of use to anybody. Every night that they went out he hoped to see something, or hear something, that would tell him of the fortunes of his friends; that might indicate that the Rats were through hiding, and were joining in the fight. Every time he was left disappointed. It was as if the Mall Rats had given up completely.

In the end it was Ebony who made him stop thinking his frustrated thoughts. The Mall Rats, she told him, would do something when they chose to do it; and no amount of worrying over it on his part would make things move any faster. He was angry with her then; what he wanted to know more than anything was whether or not they were still alive, rather than when they were going to make some kind of stand. Racha didn't seem to have made good on his promise to attack the Independents though, so either he had been bluffing, which seemed unlikely, or somebody had survived to make the weekly rendezvous with him. Bray was rather glad that he wasn't there to be making those meetings himself, but he hated not knowing anything about them, or about the fortunes of the Mall Rats themselves.

"You worry too much," Ebony told him, when they were sitting alone on watch one night. He glared.

"Somebody's got to worry. You don't care what happens to them."

"Not true. I'm quite fond of Pride, and Jack's a useful guy. I don't really want anything to happen to Trudy either, or to the baby. For reasons that I should have thought were obvious."

"Given the amount of time you've been spending with the Guardian recently, I don't think I want to know what your reasons are." Bray played absently with the rifle he was supposed to carry when on guard duty, but with which he did not feel remotely comfortable. "You'll be trying to worship poor Brady before long."

"I don't believe any of that crap, and you know it." She poured a mug of the thick concoction that served for coffee, and which hung for most of the day and night in a jug suspended over a low fire. "The Guardian is a means to an end. He brought us extra troops, extra weapons and extra supplies. I wasn't going to turn them down just because he's a mad bastard who I'd rather see dead. Besides, he has his uses. Have you heard him make speeches? The boys love it."

"They don't need his rabble-rousing. They'd do whatever you tell them."

"Maybe." She shrugged. "And maybe not. Spike turned a lot of them against me, in the days before the antidote, and the peace that it brought us. A lot of them had already turned against me, when the return of the Virus brought such a panic, remember? You were there then. You helped me to escape from a mob of my own men."

"Yes, I know. But that's all water under the bridge now. They don't even hate me anymore. When I realised that we'd been rescued by Locos that night, I thought they'd shoot me straight away, but some of them are even friendly."

"That's because they know who you are now." She smiled, sipping from her own mug of disturbingly strong coffee. "All that time Zoot worried about them finding out, because he was convinced that they'd hate him if they knew you were brothers. Now they seem to quite like the idea. You're a celebrity around here you know."

"Only because time has passed, and because Martin is dead now. They'd have hated the idea back in the old days. He was right to keep it a secret." He stared at his coffee, not bothering to drink it. "When we go out at nights on sabotage jobs, they look to me like I'm a leader. A leader of the Locos. Wouldn't Zoot love that!"

"Of course he would. It's not what he wanted at the time, because he wanted to be better than you at something. Bigger than you. But I should think he likes it well enough now. Who else would he rather pass the banner to? Brady's too young."

"Brady will never be a Loco." He was fierce for a second, and she laughed at him.

"You look like Zoot when you do that. The two of you always did know how to frown well."

"I do not look like Zoot." His expression softened a little, and he sighed. "I've been thinking about him again. I suppose it's having the Guardian around. You know he's started praying to him again? Every morning I hear him. Praying to my kid brother."

"Yes, I know. It's weird." She shrugged. "But you've got to be practical about these things, Bray. Maybe it could work to our advantage? The Locos would do anything for Zoot as a man. If they think of him as a god they really would follow him anywhere."

"You're joking."

"Yes. Seriously though, he does have his uses. He gets them fired up, and I can use that."

"He's not here to inspire them," Bray pointed out. She gave him a sparkling smile.

"No, maybe not. But his brother is."

"You've got to be kidding."

"No. Bray, we can galvanise this band into a unit that's willing to do anything, at any time, to defeat Tribe Fury. They'll do it because they're Locos, and they'll do it because I tell them to - but if they think it's what Zoot wants, they'll do it all the quicker. The Guardian has been trying to recruit them, and he hasn't really been succeeding. They follow me, not some madman they don't trust. But they have been listening to him. I've heard them, talking about what it means to have the brother of Zoot here. They already seem to think that you're some kind of figurehead. You think they'd follow just anybody on those sabotage missions? Crawling through those tunnels, some of them so small you can't stand up in them; never knowing who might be at the other end; never knowing when some guard might see you at work, and take the back of your head off with a quick bullet? They follow you because you're Zoot's brother, because you're Zoot's representative. And I think it's about time that we made that official. We need to make a proper strike against the enemy. One big assault. To do that I want to know that you're really with me."

"I'm not a Loco, Ebony. I never will be."

"Why? Because you don't believe in what we do? Nobody's asking you to. You're here to help us make a stand, not to help us run riot through the city like we used to do in the old days. Nobody's going to be enslaving any Strays, or trying to wipe out other tribes. Except Tribe Fury maybe. What else is it that you don't approve of? Our clothes?"

"It's not like that."

"No? You've never been one for big gangs, I understand that. You don't like our philosophy - fine. But we're the only people right now in this whole city who are doing something, Your friends back at the Mall haven't stuck their heads above ground in a month. Wait for them and you might be waiting for ever. The Locos are--"

"Making a difference, which I appreciate. But I'm helping you to do that anyway. I don't need to take up some kind of official position as a leader."

"Maybe you do. They respect you, and they follow you. They've fought with you, blown up buildings for you, been in car chases with you. But to them that's just games. What if something really serious happens? What if we're attacked? They'll follow me into battle, but when it comes to the crunch they'll turn to their own, not to you. They might even wind up following the Guardian, and I do not want that. But if you take up a position as joint leader of the Locos, they'll follow you to the ends of the Earth and back. You don't have to give me an answer right now. Just think about it, okay?"

"I don't know." He shook his head. "Ebony, I was a Loco once. You know that. But it's something I put behind me a long time ago. A few weeks, at the beginning of all of this. A few weeks of trying to keep Martin alive when the rest of the world was falling apart. It didn't last. It wasn't me."

"No, it wasn't. Then. But that was different, Bray. You must be able to see that. Back then we were fighting for survival, and yes, we were trying to enslave the city. I'm not denying that. But now we're not trying to take over. Not yet anyway. I'll admit that that might come next, but for now... now all we're trying to do is to drive the Furies out - and that is what you want. I know that you want to see the others again, and I know you want to help them, and look after Trudy, and find Amber. But until the streets are safe again there's not much point in trying to do any of that, is there. Well is there?"

"No. I suppose not." He looked past her, to where a group of Locos were drilling with empty rifles. They looked like a nightmare brought to life - his enemies of old, now armed with terrifying weaponry. Compared to Tribe Fury, though, they were not really very terrifying at all. Ebony was right, and his best hope for making a difference did seem to lie with the Locos. The Mall might as well be a million miles away, and the city limits, beyond which he had been forced to leave Amber, seemed further away still. On the whole he was left with little choice.

"You agree?" Ebony was delighted, and he wasn't surprised. This was the sort of thing she had dreamt of since the early days. He felt as though he were finally caving in to old pressures forever resisted, and part of him was angry with himself. He wasn't a Loco; there were times when he didn't even feel like a Mall Rat. At heart he would probably always be a Stray. And yet here he was joining his enemies, the people he had fought a one man war against in the days before Trudy's pregnancy; in the days before he had met Amber; in the days before he had ever set foot inside the Mall. Long ago days, that might as well be decades past instead of months. But they weren't just long ago days - they were long gone days. Now was the time for something else. He reached out his hand.

"You won't be sorry." Ebony was fighting back the sort of excitement that made him angrier still. "Zoot would be so--" She broke off. "We're glad to have you on board."

"Only until Tribe Fury are gone." He felt her hand, firm and hot in his, and thought about how much he had hated her, so very recently. All that she had done to keep him and Amber apart. All that she had been. There was still a spark, though, when their hands touched. He hoped that she hadn't noticed it as well.

"Only until Tribe Fury are gone." She smiled at him. "Then after that it's all out war, right? The city goes to the strongest tribe. Except, I don't think there's really any doubt who that is."

"We'll see." He pulled his hand away. "The way things are going, we'll never see the Furies thrown out."

"Optimism, Bray. Optimism."

"Yeah." Optimism. With barely thirty people, and an entire army to defeat. It wasn't easy to think positive. Ebony smiled at him.

"Death or glory, remember? Come on, you're a Loco now. Smash them or be smashed. We make one definitive strike, to show the city that we're here, and who knows where it'll lead us?" She punched him on the arm. "Think big. It'll cheer you up, even if it is all a pipe dream."

"Maybe." He offered her the smallest of smiles. "But I can't help thinking this is going to come to nothing, and we're all going to die horribly."

"Probably. But on the other hand, together, who knows what we might do? We're going to win our city back, Bray. The two of us. In the end."

"Yeah." He wished that he could be more positive; that he didn't feel as though he was heading for very dangerous ground. "The two of us. Sure." But underneath the unease, he couldn't deny that his heart was now beating a little stronger.

They had set up home in what must once have been a storm drain, though it was blocked off not far inside. It was dry there, at least for now. When the weather changed, perhaps, and the sea became wilder, then it would no longer be safe - but for now KC was confident that all would be well. They used sacking for bedding, buoyed up with sticks and leaves, and found it all as comfortable as their beds in the Mall had ever been. It was simply high spirits perhaps, for life was hard outside. KC didn't care - he had lived rough even before civilisation had fallen, and it all seemed more fun now. Away from the Mall Chloe was an entirely different companion. She was still worried about Patsy and Salene, but now at least she had other things to occupy her mind. She had to forage for food, instead of being kept inside all the time by well meaning elders. She had to hide from dangers, instead of being hidden from them. Perversely it had made her less afraid.

They lived on fish and seaweed for the most part. KC was good at catching fish, and the seaweed was always easy to find. It hadn't been safe to eat, once, coming from so close to the shore - but the sewage pipes no longer pumped out their filth, and the factories had ceased to dump chemicals into the water, and nature had recovered herself quickly. Everything tasted good now, and although they could not always cook the food, for fear of their fire being seen, it didn't seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter, except for their missing friends. Chloe made plans for escaping the city, and even though KC didn't think that they would ever really amount to much, he helped her with them, and added his own thoughts to the pile. It couldn't hurt. For himself he had ideas of helping the resistance, for rumours reached them even in their solitary existence. Things were stirring. The hotel and all the land around it was cordoned off, but within that broad sweep of the city, struggles still went on. Fires threw flame into the sky at unexpected moments; explosions rattled the buildings. Sabotage, so the local rumours went. It seemed incredible that such things could continue - that anybody would be able to withstand the might of Tribe Fury for this long; but apparently the resistance could. There was talk that it was the Locos, returned from the dead; there were tales of Ebony, leading her hectic, insane band of warriors once again. That news had made KC's blood run cold at first; until he had realised that it was probably for the best. The Mall Rats were still struggling. They needed support before they could truly make a stand. For now it was up to somebody else to get things underway - and who better than the Locos? They were evil, yes - but they were strong and determined, and many of them had never cared if they lived or died. And if appearances were true, and they really were doomed to failure, then such things would stand them in good stead. Perhaps the rest of the city would be stirred up then. Led on to victory by the Locos and their mad struggle for glory. Whatever happened, it was good to know that somebody at least was trying.

For weeks the pair stayed where they were, sleeping on their sacks and their sticks, eating their fish and their seaweed, and making great plans for finding their vanished friends; until, one day, they realised that the time had come to leave. The boats that swept the deeper water, making sure that nobody could leave or enter the city by sea were coming closer; the daily patrols along the beach were becoming more thorough, more frequent, more dangerous. It was time to find somewhere else to live. Chloe suggested going back to the Mall, though neither one of them really considered it. They had no wish to be babied anymore. Instead, collecting up a few stores, they slipped away in the dead of night, and headed in the opposite direction to their old home. KC wanted to find a battle to fight, and Chloe wanted very much to go with him. She didn't know if she was cut out to join the resistance, but she did know that she had to do something. It was her city; and she was damn well going to fight for it, one way or another.

"I'm sorry that we couldn't stay on the beach," KC muttered to her, as they hurried away into the streets. She smiled at him.

"I'm not. It was nice while it lasted, but it could never have been permanent. It's not fair to be happy when there's so much going on."

"I suppose. I had thought... well I had thought that things would move more quickly than they have. Lex made all those speeches in the Mall. I thought the fighting would really be underway by now. But it's not. They're not doing anything, and the only fighting that's going on is around the hotel. Crazy stuff. Stuff everybody says has no chance of succeeding."

"Which is why you want to join it I suppose?"

"Not me, Chlo. I only fight battles I know I have some hope of winning." He smiled at her. "But there's got to be something we can do, right?"

"Somewhere. I guess. At the very least we can get a bit closer to the heart of things, and see what's going on."

"Scared?"

"No!" It was an outright lie and he could see it in her eyes, but he didn't say anything. He was scared too. It was at moments such as this that he thought about how young he was. Could cities really be freed by small boys who didn't know what they were doing? But the doubt didn't last long. Like almost any other small boy, KC had boundless confidence in himself. He was indestructible. War could be so great a game. Grinning crookedly he offered Chloe his hand, and she took it after a moment's hesitation. When he did things like that she still expected tricks, he knew. Still expected him to whip his hand away at the last minute, perhaps. Once upon a time he had done that kind of thing all the time.

"So where are we going?" she asked him. He shrugged.

"There's an old warehouse, just outside the official cordon. We'll take stock there."

"And try not to get shot."

"Well, yeah." He smiled again, all restless excitement and optimism. "Still missing the Mall?"

"I'll always miss the Mall. But only how it used to be. With Patsy there, and Salene, and Amber and Ryan. When we were all in there arguing about food, and about the Locos and Tribe Circus, and even when Lex was trying to have Bray thrown out. It's not home there anymore. Now it's all about glowering and muttering and wishing for a way out." She shook her head sadly. "Maybe it'll be home again one day."

"I'd like that." He pointed. "It's that way, you know. Not far. If you want to reconsider?"

"I don't." She took the lead, pulling him onwards. "We have other things to do, right?"

"Right." Heart light, he quickened his step. He had no idea what they were getting into, but he was looking forward to it anyway. Things were moving at last; and one way or another, it would all be different now.

Chapter Text

The Mall Rats had rarely been so afraid as they were in the weeks following their separation from Ebony and Bray. Lex wasn't afraid, or claimed not to be, but Trudy was at her wits end, and Jack seemed a bundle of nerves. They were all worried about Chloe and KC, and not knowing if Bray was still alive was hard on them all, even if Lex liked to pretend that he didn't care. Bray had been his enemy for a long time, although the fight against the Chosen had helped to bring them together, and it was easy to appear unconcerned for the other boy's welfare. In truth he missed him; missed the sparring, missed the arguments, missed the quiet confidence. He missed the food, too. Without Bray they had no way of replenishing their stocks, for Lex had never been good at gathering food. Even Pride was drawing a blank, although perhaps that was not such a surprise. What he was good at out in the country was not necessarily something that he could also achieve in the city, and on his few voyages outside the Mall he always came back empty handed - until Racha had taken to supplying them.

They had gone to him every week, just as he had demanded, and he told them about the Locos and their war. Not that they needed telling, for at night the streets screamed with over-taxed car engines and wretched brakes. They heard gunfire and the sound of marching soldiers on patrol, and sat together in one of the bedrooms, thinking about Chloe and KC. Brady cried all night, unable to get to sleep, and Pride paced like a caged animal, swearing at the darkened windows and everything beyond them. It was the reason for their fear, for the increased difficulty in finding their own stores. The reason why it was barely safe to leave the Mall. Racha wouldn't let them off their weekly meetings though, any more than he would help them in finding out whether Bray and the others had survived the tussle leading to their separation. He told tales of the skirmishes between the growing forces of Tribe Fury, and the tiny band of Locos ranged against them. To him it was all fine sport of course; the sort of thing that he had hoped for. He had no faith in its lasting, however, and he often expounded at length about the limited shelf life of a Loco resistance. He was convinced that they would all be dead within weeks, and it was clear that he still wanted the Mall Rats to provide him with the kind of long term resistance that really would be entertaining. Hence the food, presumably. It was barely enough for them, and wouldn't have been had KC and Chloe still been in the Mall, but it kept them alive. It kept them dependent on the enemy, too, which made Lex simmer. It wasn't long before he was refusing to have anything to do with the smug Fury, and it was up to Pride to keep their humiliating rendezvous.

And so they passed the time, with Lex growing ever more angry and dissatisfied, snapping even at Tai-San in his rage. Jack grew increasingly obsessed with security, designing and building more and more alarms and surveillance systems, and turning the Mall into more of a bunker every day. Pride was changing too, becoming more aloof and speaking to no one, save for when he and Lex clashed head on. Of all of them only Luke was happy.

He had been something of a revelation. Ever since the apparent death of the Guardian he had changed into a very different person to the one they had known before. His nervousness and awkwardness were gone, and his initial lovelorn response to the news of Ellie's departure hadn't lasted very long. Instead he became a better team player than any of them, helping to search for KC and Chloe in the early days, before they streets became too dangerous; helping Jack with his projects once their old animosity had had a chance to fade; even helping Trudy with Brady. He proved to be a remarkable cook, making more from their meagre supplies than any of the rest of them might have managed, and even Lex had to admit that he was handy to have around. The only thing that seemed to dampen Luke's spirits was not knowing what the Chosen were up to, but he consoled himself with the thought that, if they had sense, they would be staying in their underground home; for as the Locos stepped up their insanely suicidal operations, so Tribe Fury stepped up their own security. The streets were rarely empty of patrolling guards now.

And it went on. Lex sank ever deeper into a pit of depression and self-hatred. Tai-San worried over how she would ever win him back. Trudy sang sad songs to the baby she had always hoped Bray would help her to raise; and which now she seemed doomed to raise alone. Jack rarely ventured out of his den, and Pride alone went outside. Down pre-agreed routes, at pre-agreed times. Everything mapped out by Racha, killing the Mall Rat pride a little more every time. Something had to snap, and they all knew it. They could only hope that, when it happened, it would not mean the end for them all.

The weeks had made Amber stronger, as she had hoped that they would; but inevitably they had also brought her due date closer. She felt large and unwieldy now, though Sasha laughed at her for it. So long as she could still run when she had to, and display a reasonable degree of manoeuvrability, he felt that there was nothing for her to worry about; but still she felt dissatisfied. It was harder to be comfortable when she was sleeping, and harder to sleep anyway. The baby was apparently as restless as she was, and woke her up at unwelcome moments with its wriggling. It was comforting, she supposed, to know that it was healthy, but she wished that it would pipe down. She was no longer entirely sure when it was due, since the days had run together and she had lost track of the true passage of time; but it was readily apparent that it was no longer a distant event. Another month perhaps? Or just weeks? On the one hand it sounded like plenty of time to find Bray, but when viewed in the context of the weeks she had already spent doing nothing, it didn't seem like so very long at all. Bray could be anywhere. He could be dead. She might not find out the truth either way until Tribe Fury were gone - and yet all that she had done to accomplish that future goal was to get plenty of rest, allow Sasha to supply her with food, and quiz the two waif-like, forlorn people who had somehow managed to escape from the city. They had told tales of a fledging resistance supposedly led by Ebony, but seemed never to have heard of the Mall Rats. Amber wasn't sure what to believe, but the noises that they heard each night leant credence at least to the tales of a resistance. Following the initial invasion things had become quiet; but now the was silence no longer a constant thing. Somebody was engaging the Furies in gun battles. Somebody was blowing things up. Somebody was setting off old police sirens, in screaming testimony to the stories of Ebony's leadership. Police sirens said Loco, in high-pitched noisy letters. It was hard to imagine anybody else using them. She was partly worried by the idea of a Locust revival, but the notion of a resistance, no matter how small or insane, gave her some hope. There were people in the city fighting back - and if the Locos could do it then so could she. So could her friends. If Ebony was alive... It meant nothing of course, given the girl's tremendous luck and cunning, but it was something to cling to. If she was alive, then the others could be too. They might even be helping her.

Sasha soon recognised the restlessness that had taken over Amber. He correctly interpreted some of it as being caused by the growing baby, and her wish for things to be settled before it arrived, but he failed to recognise the influence of that noisy, and who knew how effective, resistance. She wanted to be a part of it, doing her bit to save her city, and it was this, even more than the ever nearing birth, that led to her announcing one morning that they were going to enter the city. It was something that they had talked about almost every day since setting up camp near to the city limits, but this time it was obvious that she meant it. Sasha nodded his head slowly, and his thick red hair bounced with a cheer that he didn't share.

"Well we've got to go in there sometime I suppose." He knew that his lack of enthusiasm was showing in his voice, but it was hard to feel any differently. Theoretically, since at least two people had got out, it ought to be possible for at least two people to get in, but still it seemed like suicide. The patrols were not constant of course, and even Tribe Fury couldn't look in all directions at once, but to sneak into the city, find shelter, and stay out of the hands of the enemy whilst striving to reach the Mall all seemed like too much to hope to accomplish. There was no way of knowing if the Mall Rats were even still living in their Mall, since it might long ago have been over run. They might be delivering themselves into any kind of danger by going there, just in the hope that their friends were still in residence. It was, however, what Amber wanted - and therefore it was exactly what Sasha intended to help her to achieve. Nothing was too difficult, when Amber was involved. Nothing was too hard, too awkward, too dangerous.

They had talked about attacking a couple of Furies and stealing their uniforms. They had talked about disguising themselves and joining in with work crews; about choosing what seemed to be a less well guarded area and sneaking in - even just biting the bullet and running in. The latter was ridiculous, even without Amber's growing inability to run fast, but they still hadn't entirely discounted it. It was a plan just like any other, and Amber was getting desperate. Now that she was fit enough to make a move she wanted that move made.

Going on the scant information they had got from their two waylaid escapees, they disguised themselves as peddlers in the end. Loading themselves down with fish that Sasha had caught, and with a variety of wild vegetables, they headed purposefully towards the city with the intention of entering it openly. They didn't try to hide from anybody, or to sneak in unseen. They just walked. Perhaps it was this brazen attitude that left them unmolested, though brazen or not Sasha couldn't help a slight quiver in his step. Amber smiled at him.

"When do you think we're going to be challenged?"

"Sooner rather than later." He held up his load of fish. "I hope so, anyway. These things stink."

"Probably look wonderful to a hungry battalion of soldiers, though."

"Yeah. So wonderful that they'll take them and us, and we'll never see daylight again." He smiled at her, typically cheerful, and typically Sasha. "Are you okay?"

"I haven't exactly walked far yet, have I. I'm fine."

"Well don't overdo it." He nodded up ahead. "Welcoming committee?"

"Where?" She caught sight of three gun-toting Furies heading towards them from out of the wreckage of a nearby building, and swallowed hard. "Okay. Well it's now or never."

"Let's hope they like fish."

"And slightly dishevelled vegetables." They quickened their pace, going to meet the three teenagers with as much bravado as they could muster. Amber smiled brilliantly, and let Sasha launch into the kind of welcoming patter that would have put a professional salesman to shame.

"Gentlemen!" His smile was like sunshine. "Might we interest you in some fish?"

"Who are you?" The first of the three was a boy of about seventeen, with close-cropped, auburn hair and mirrored sunglasses. He was built like a professional soldier, with the sort of muscle tone that people in the old world had always aspired to, but if he took any pride in it, it didn't show in his hard face. Sasha was rather taken aback, but he didn't allow his smile to waver.

"My name is Sasha, sir. Sasha the traveller, the wanderer, the purveyor of goods and entertainment. I sing, I dance, I tell stories - and I sell goods. Groceries. And today, I'm also a fishmonger." He held out his stock, trying to position them so that the still wet scales caught the sunlight most artfully. "Finest catch. Only the finest catch for Tribe Fury."

"I don't know you." The auburn-headed soldier was frowning, creating deep lines in his young face. "Are you registered?"

"Registered?" Sasha recalled the two boys who had escaped from the city mentioning something about a registration scheme. It was one of the many things that made him dislike this new regime even more than he might otherwise have done. He smiled on. "No sir, not registered. Not yet, anyway. My partner and I are new to the city. We heard of the new rule here, and thought that it might be the perfect opportunity. We want to be a part of the new order, don't we Amber."

"Of course we do. Order in the city at last." It was surprisingly easy to lie; perhaps because of how much might rest upon it. "I used to live here, and the place has gone to the dogs since the adults died. But now? Now there's proper leadership. So we thought we'd come here, bring goods to trade, and see if there's some kind of... line of communication that we can open up."

"And you want to sell us fish?" The auburn-haired soldier looked away in disgust. "You're not supposed to be able to get into the city."

"I'm terribly sorry, we didn't realise. There was nobody to tell us that, you see. You're the first people we've seen." Sasha grinned winningly. "We haven't broken any laws, have we? That wouldn't be a great start to our relationship."

"Sod that." The auburn boy glanced over the fish, face still impassive but voice now showing some indication of his desire for the food. "You might have got in, but obviously security is good enough to have stopped you from getting in any further. Strikes me that there's nothing too much to worry about."

"Exactly!" Sasha's smile wavered only briefly. "Just as a matter of interest... what would have happened if we'd got in further before you saw us?"

"We'd have shot you." The other boy shouldered his rifle. "I'm Lieutenant Archer. I'm taking delivery of your fish."

"Well of course you are. And pleased we are to hand it over." Sasha beamed merrily, well aware that he wasn't going to be getting any kind of payment for it. "And the vegetables?"

"Keep them. Here." Archer dug into pocket and dug out a piece of paper. "This is a permit. It'll let you get deeper into the city, and sell that stuff to whoever will buy it. Just remember that you're required to give a percentage of whatever you get to head office. And if I don't see you leaving the city again before nightfall - by the same route you took in - you will be found eventually, and your takings will all be forfeit - along with your freedom. Or your life. Understood?"

"Oh absolutely." Sasha dredged up yet another cheerful smile. "Thank you. We'll see you later then."

"Just make sure that you do." Archer moved aside, handing the fish to his associate. "Before nightfall."

"You got it." Taking Amber's hand, and putting as much spring into his step as there had been merriment in his smile, Sasha began to lead the way further into the city. Hungry soldiers were less concerned with security - that was something to remember for the future.

"That was too easy," commented Amber, once they were sure they were out of earshot. Sasha shook his head.

"I don't think so. For all we know they might let outsiders in now and then, if they have something that can be useful. They need the food here, don't they. Not easy to collect your own when you have a city to conquer, and rebels to fight - and slave labour isn't known for its efficiency. Besides, for all we know they really will make us sorry if we're not out of here by nightfall. They might find us in minutes."

"We should have tried this weeks ago. Everything might be different then."

"Yeah." He offered her a gentle smile. "You'd probably be dead, and your baby certainly would be. Now let's just get rid of these vegetables, and see what we can find out about what's going on."

"And hope that we never run into Archer again. When we don't leave the city tonight, he's going to be gunning for us."

"Yeah." Sasha's smile at last blinked itself out. "Now I remember why I hated this idea."

"You thought of it!"

"True." He shrugged, and relieved her of much of her burden of wares. "But if it gets me shot by a psychotic poser in stupid glasses, I'm denying all responsibility. Now hurry up. We've got a lot to do."

"Yes." She thought of her friends; of the Mall; of the city in general, and it suddenly hit her just how much there really was to do. It all seemed so much harder, now that she was here. Now that she could see the ruined buildings, the gunfire scars, the bloodstains sprayed against walls. "We have, haven't we."

All things considered, it had probably seemed like a good idea to somebody. The Guardian, in all likelihood, since he was the only one of them that Bray knew for sure was insane - but after weeks of making their little strikes, their little acts of sabotage, they had decided that the time was ripe for a proper, out and out assault. On the one hand it did seem like a feasible plan - on the other; the far more sensible other; it was anything but. A powerful strike; a real assault that would show their strength to the whole of the city; could win them support and respsect. On paper, or in words, it seemed level-headed enough. The problem was, thought Bray, as he crawled through an underground tunnel barely two feet high, they didn't really have any strength to show. He and Ebony were the leaders of a band of some thirty people, including the newly recruited Chosen, and although between them they boasted considerable experience in street fighting, compared to Tribe Fury they were little more than a ragged, mad little band of rebels. They had guns enough for all, but nobody really knew how much ammunition they had; and their supply of grenades was severely limited. They seemed to have no chance of making a difference - but the war had to be fought some time. The first blow had to be struck. Bray was as bored with the training and arguing and planning as were the Locos, and it was true that they might as well be risking it all as sitting in their headquarters and wishing for victories that they weren't even trying to win.

So why did it seem such a bad idea now? He reached the end of the tunnel, struggling up into the darkness of a night just falling, and gestured for his companions to follow him up. Ebony came second, smiling at him in her most insinuating and gleeful manner.

"It's a good night for it," she commented. "You should have taken a gun. We'll have a good chance of killing a lot of them, on a night like this."

"I'm not here for the killing." He turned away from her, staring about at the place in which they now standing. A garden, once, designed by somebody famous if he remembered correctly. A tribute to somebody, set in the middle of a collection of offices. Part of it had been visible from the windows of the school bus, but he had never actually stood here before. It was overgrown now of course, and some of the trees had been cut down for firewood, but something of the old splendour remained.

"You're here for the war, Bray. And war means killing." She slapped the stock of her rifle and shrugged casually, brightly. "And maiming."

"And chaos, I suppose."

"What's more chaotic than war? This is the battle Zoot brought us all together for. The ultimate clash between order and disorder. The perfect struggle for power."

"Why would Zoot bring you together for a suicide mission?"

"You're really not onboard with this, are you. This is our chance to strike a blow, remember? Our chance to show everybody that it's possible to stand up to Tribe Fury. The rest of the city isn't getting that message, even with the rumour-mill spreading the word around. We might think we're being heroic by putting sand in petrol tanks, and rigging the pins in grenades - but not enough people know that we're doing it. We have to--" She broke off. "What?"

"Nothing." He had been smiling at her, amused by her enthusiasm, but the smile died now in a rush of guilt. Was he letting his mind drift away from Amber? "I was just..."

"You haven't smiled at me like that since the school dance, a few days before we broke up." She shrugged. "But it's okay. I know it's not me that you're thinking about. And anyway, we're wasting time just talking about it. Aren't we."

"Yeah." Grateful to her for steering the subject onto other areas, he smiled awkwardly. "So, er... we do have a plan beyond staying alive, right?"

"Staying alive isn't really part of the plan. It's more of a... bonus." As ever she gave the impression of one who found all things hard to take seriously. "Haven't you heard, Bray? If you're frightened of dying you're not really alive."

"I'm not frightened of dying." He met her eyes, glad to feel that odd moment of fondness begin to fade. "I'm frightened you won't."

"Yeah, and I love you too." She turned around, looking over her people as the last of them emerged from the tunnel, before sliding effortlessly into the role of fabled orator. "We have a war to fight. We have to fight it well. We have to show Tribe Fury that there are people in this city who are ready to stand up to them. But the question is are we ready?" Her answer was a raucous howl of affirmation. "Can we show this city that we can fight back?" Another howl answered her, and Bray had to grant her a moment's grudging respect. She was a talented leader, and it was clear that her Locos would follow her wherever she chose to take them. Regardless of the likelihood - the certainty - that they would be overheard, she raised her voice still more. "We're going to teach them a lesson, right? The same lesson we taught to the Demon Dogs, and the Spinnakers, and Tribe Circus, and the Red Skulls. What was that lesson about?"

"Power and chaos!" The cry rang out like the bellow of some many-voiced beast. "Power and chaos!"

"The Locos will triumph!"

"Power and chaos!"

"The Locos will destroy!"

"Power and chaos!" It had become a mantra; the perfectly united voice of an eager mob. It was a cry straight from the recent past, and it chilled Bray's blood. This was the cry he had heard when he had been struggling to survive on the streets. It was the cry of all that had ever been wrong with the city since the death of the adults. The cry that went with wailing sirens and screaming children, and Martin with his mad eyes and frenzied hate. Right now though, it was the cry of hope - and of comradeship. A part of him wanted to join in.

"Then what do you say we stop standing here yelling about it, and get out there and do it?" Again the screams and bellows came in answer; again the Locos howled their battle readiness like wolves howling at the moon. Ebony was grinning hugely, and when she turned to Bray he could see that her eyes were wide and bright with the heat of her own power. "Looks like we're ready."

"Looks like it." He drew a deep breath, nervous now that the time has come. "People will have heard. They'll be on their way."

"I know." She shrugged lightly. "So let's go to meet them. Are you sure you're well enough armed?"

"As well as I'm ever going to be." He had no regrets that he wasn't carrying a gun. When it came down to it he didn't believe that he would ever be able to fire one, so he might just as well stick to the bastardised quarter-staff fighting he had learnt in his early days on the street. He had been honing his skills these last weeks, and he was confident enough of his abilities. In close quarters it would be as effective as a gun, he was sure.

"Then come on." She started marching, and he kept step with her automatically. The others were falling in behind, chains clanking, boots hitting hard on the tarmac as they reached the streets. Bray had to acknowledge the tremendous sense of power to be marching at the head of such a band; like running with a gang in the old days, he supposed. Maybe Martin's decision to be a part of all of this hadn't been so unfathomable after all. Ebony grinned across at him.

"Hell of a buzz, isn't it. I'd forgotten, you know. All of this... I've been a Mall Rat too bloody long."

"It is..." Words failed him, and he shrugged. "A buzz just about covers it I guess. They really will follow you anywhere."

"Us, Bray. They'll follow us anywhere. As far as they're concerned it's the two of us leading this little expedition, and if it comes to the time for yelling orders, you'll find that they'll obey yours just as well as they do mine. All excepting the Chosen maybe. I don't know who they'll follow."

"With the Guardian staying back nice and safe at HQ, your guess is as good as mine. He's probably already given them their orders." Bray resisted throwing a glance back to where the various blue-robed Chosen were marching amongst the Locos. "And those orders are probably something to do with stabbing me in the back when everybody else is too busy to notice."

"I wouldn't recommend taking your eyes off them for too long, certainly. My boys don't trust them either though, so don't worry too much. Deep down the Locos know that Zoot was no god." She smiled faintly. "Sometimes the Guardian says things and they seem to make a certain sense... but then I remember Martin falling over his own feet on the dance floor back at school, and I know that it's all cracked. Don't worry. We can handle him."

"I hope so." In all honesty, though, Bray was almost as unsure of the Locos as he was of the Chosen. The Locos were his oldest enemy, and had always hated him in the days when they hadn't known that he was Zoot's brother. Why should that knowledge make such a difference now? Ebony claimed that they had changed their opinion of him, and that his joining them had swung them around - but they had always been so hostile in the past. Still, today their main concern was Tribe Fury, and there would be little enough opportunity for personal feelings with that enemy to face. He wondered how long it would be before the Furies came to meet them. They had been making enough noise; they had passed several roof sentries already. He imagined the conversations that were being barked out over the airwaves, courtesy of those little personal radios, and wondered how big an army would be sent to quell this unexpected uprising. Tribe Fury wouldn't want to take any risks. They would want any rebellion to be destroyed quickly, as an example to all. It didn't seem a question of whether or not the Locos could win, so much as how quickly they would be defeated. Once again Bray remembered the objections he had raised from the beginning of this insane operation - and once again he remembered Ebony's opposing arguments. The city needed a gesture, and it didn't matter how successful it was. It was strike now, whatever the risks - or never strike at all. Maybe somebody would take up the momentum afterwards, and maybe they wouldn't. The challenge was in finding out. He couldn't help thinking that it was a very flawed theory, but it won him around when he replayed it in his head just as it had when he had first heard it bellowed out to their irregular army. Death or glory, just as Ebony had said. Not his usually way, certainly - but that was before everything had changed. The rules were different with Tribe Fury. They had to be. So he swallowed his doubts, tightened his hold on his staff, and marched on with Ebony into the old High Street. It was no surprise to see that the enemy were waiting for them.

Chapter Text

It was the sound of fighting that awoke Amber, though gunfire was no longer a strange sound to her. She lay silently on her back, staring up at a ceiling barely visible to her, and listened to the noise. Even through the thick walls and the boarded up windows, the sound still came clearly to her ears. Guns blazing, the heavy thuds of fighting with other kinds of weaponry. Voices screamed and yelled.

"You awake?" Sasha sounded tired, and she recognised the unhappiness in his voice. He hated to hear such things, especially when they were happening so close by. She reached out for him, taking his hand, and squeezed it gently. His close presence was as comforting to her as hers was to him.

"I'm awake." She smiled wryly. "It'd be rather hard to stay asleep."

"What do you suppose is going on down there?" He rolled over onto his side, staring at her earnestly. "It doesn't sound like the usual quick clash."

"I don't think it is."

He sat up then. "Do you think somebody is fighting back? A rebellion?"

"Why? Do you want in on it?" She sat up as well, stretching her stiff legs. She had become used to the comfortable bed that they had had at their camp outside the city, and the hard, bare boards of this abandoned house were extremely unpleasant in comparison. Sasha smiled ruefully.

"I don't think I'd be much good in a fight. Especially not one with guns. But this is what we came here for, isn't it?"

"I don't know. We came here hoping that we might be able to help free the city. Either this is an organised fight that's the start of all of that... or it's very likely suicide."

"But either way we should take a look I suppose." he didn't sound enthusiastic, and she sympathised. The last thing that she wanted was to go out there and watch people die.

"Yes. Yes, we should." She stood up, though she didn't make any move towards the door. "It's getting closer, anyway. We should take a look. If by some amazing stroke of luck this is the start of a proper fight, we have to know. There might be something that we can do to help. Tip the scales."

"The two of us? Without any weapons?" He smiled his familiar, warm grin. "I could play my flute. Soothe the savage beast and all that."

"Somehow I don't think so." She sighed, going over to the window, and peering out between the slats that covered it. It was too dark to see anything save flashes of gunfire and a dark, struggling mass of people. From the look of things there were guns on both sides, which had to be encouraging. Could it be that she had chanced so much by entering the city, only to find that the work she had come here to do was already underway? She hoped so. Still - it seemed to her that there were less guns on one side than on the other; less people on one side than the other. There were no multitudes bursting out of the nearby houses to join in the struggle and force Tribe Fury back. There seemed to be no reinforcements; no voices spreading the tale of this fight. She could see no distant fires, hear no distant gunfire, so this fight was not being emulated elsewhere. If it was a rebellion, it was a lonely one. It would be a quick one too.

"What do you think?" asked Sasha. Amber shook her head.

"I don't think there's anything we can do out there. I don't think this is it."

"Just a little band of no-hopers, huh." He peered out through the slats himself, but couldn't see enough to comment on. "There are so many people down there."

"Not really. We needed more than that to defeat the Chosen. So many of us all fighting together. For a moment I thought..." She shook her head. "But this isn't it. It's not even a start."

"Then maybe we should stay out of it?"

"I don't know." She wanted to think that there might be something she could do, but she knew that in all honesty there was nothing. She was one girl, and though maybe she could make a difference with a speech at the right moment, she could have nothing like the same positive effect against an army. A bullet ricocheted off the wall just beside the window through which they were peering, and both jumped. Sasha smiled nervously.

"Maybe we should leave after all."

"Maybe." Another shot pinged off the brickwork, and she couldn't help but flinch. "People are going to die down there, Sasha."

"Some of them probably already have." He pulled her away from the window. "Make up your mind, Amber. Do we try to help? Or head for somewhere out of the firing line? I'll back you up whichever you choose."

"What can we do to help?" After thinking such positive thoughts, and having almost been ready to run right out and lend her support, the reality had taken firm hold now. Without guns, without sufficient people, without a strategy of some kind, there was nothing that she could do. This time she wasn't going to be marching at the head of a vast army of Gaians, as she had been when she had helped orchestrate the downfall of the Chosen. She felt terrible. So many high hopes, and yet here she was planning to run out on the very people who had displayed the courage to try to achieve something. She was leaving them to die; there was no escaping that. Where were the others? Why weren't the other city dwellers coming out to join them? Guns or no guns, sheer force of numbers might help. They might have a chance then. Sasha squeezed her hand.

"It's a start," he told her. "It means that there's still hope out there. Maybe the others will see this, or hear about it, and realise that it is possible to fight back. Maybe that's why those people are trying something like this?"

"Even though they've got no chance of winning?"

"Maybe they think they have. Maybe they think it's worth the risk. Either way, agonising over it yourself isn't going to help. We have to leave before a stray shot makes it through one of the windows. I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling especially bullet-proof today." She smiled faintly at this equally faint joke, then responded to the pressure on her hand and followed him to the door. The sound of gunfire was constant now, and she heard the explosion of a grenade as well. It was insane to use explosives in the midst of a fight that seemed to be at such close quarters, but apparently neither side of the battle was especially well balanced mentally. They had to be mad. All of them.

Outside the building the sounds of the battle were inevitably louder. A pair of Locos had found a vantage point atop a wall, and were hurling grenades towards the back of the Fury ranks. Ebony had no idea why they thought it a good plan, but she had no intention of trying to reach them to direct their energies elsewhere. The explosions were too far away to bother her, locked as she was in a struggle in the centre of the melée. Her gun had proved useless as a projectile weapon at such close range, and she had resorted to using it like a club. There was a certain sense of accomplishment in swinging the metal and wood, and hearing the sound of it coming into contact with an enemy. Not that it made much difference. They were losing, and on a grand scale it appeared. She supposed it was inevitable, and knew that deep down she had not been expecting a glorious victory - but the reality of the loss was hard to take nonetheless. It added to her anger and to the force of her fighting, but neither made the situation less desperate. Perhaps it was time to think about escape routes. Damage limitation. Who she could afford to sacrifice, and who she needed to survive. Bray was beside her. Even in the crush and the craziness he remained close to her side, battling on with his customary mettle. He laid about him with his staff, no sign left of his earlier show of distaste for the killing. There could be no time for the niceties now of course, when they were pressed in upon from all sides by struggling figures; with blows accidental and intentional coming from every direction. It was a time for instinct and no clear thought; of fast movement or death. Ebony knew that her eyes were feverishly bright, but she wasn't sure how much of the reason was fear and how much was excitement. She didn't think the fear was real. Self-preservation was important of course, but fear was the enemy of chaos. Fear held you back; prevented the last leap into the wildness that all the Locos loved. So it was that she abandoned her thoughts of retreat, and letting herself shout aloud in a singing, ululating cry of sheer exultation, she set about the enemy with greater vigour. Her ears rang with gunshots and the roar of other voices, and there was no space at all for any clarity of mind anymore. There didn't need to be, at least by her reckoning.

For Bray the situation was different, although the lack of any real opportunity to think things through prevented him from dwelling on the unpleasantness. He had lost all sense of self early on - there was no time to focus upon anything save the constant swinging to-and-fro of his staff. No time to think about who he was hitting, and how hard. A skull could crack under the force of a stick as surely as if struck by a bullet. He knew that there would be consequences to endure later - delayed guilt, and echoing afterimages. He had faced it all before. During a fight there was no time to see individual faces, but they were all stored somewhere, ready to come back from the depths of the memory in quieter moments. Bloodied faces and widened eyes; all such young faces of course. Most of these people - this great opposing army - were younger than him. Years younger, some of them. There was no time to think about that either though - not yet. He would remember it later, when he remembered their faces, after everything had become quiet again. If he survived.

The explosion that finally tore away the fog in his mind came from his left, he thought. The side that Ebony wasn't on. He had grown used to the sound of such explosions, in the distance. The Locos had been hurling grenades towards the back of the Fury ranks on and off for some time - a semi-regular incidental music to the battle. This explosion was closer though; close enough for him to feel the heat, and to see a flash of flame. Somebody screamed. With a certain level of consciousness now returned to him, Bray turned his head to look, and saw a struggling figure with their clothes on fire. He thought about going to help, but somebody caught him so powerful a blow between the shoulder blades that he staggered and almost fell. The crush of moving bodies was all about again, as everybody tried to move away from the site of the explosion, and sheer weight of numbers kept him on his feet. A laughing Loco swung his gun around, abandoning his use of it as a club long enough to fire a single shot into Bray's attacker. The Fury fell, and the Loco clapped Bray hard on the back.

"Watch out for more explosions." The Loco's voice was loud and clear, despite the other noise. "Further on back the Furies have fire bombs I think."

"Keep pushing forward." Ebony was there of course, the red paint on her face augmented now with sprays of blood. "Don't let them take the initiative."

"They outnumber us ten to one at least. The initiative is the last thing I'm worried about." Bray pushed her aside and swung up his staff to knock down a Fury who had been about to knife her in the back. "This is crazy. I can't--"

"Down!" Ebony pushed him to one side, but whether that had been to help protect him, or to give herself a clearer run for cover he didn't know. He thought that he heard something whistle - then quite suddenly everything in front of him was a sheet of towering flame. He felt his face go dry in the rush of heat, and felt his lungs contract as the hot air rushed through them. His vision blurred.

"Bloody hell." The Loco who had helped Bray before was gone as soon as he had spoken, fighting his way back from the flames. Bray put him from his mind. Together he and Ebony fought their own way around the fire, but there were other flames now spreading out from the main conflagration. Everybody was falling back from the heat, and for a moment a sort of sanity seemed to return - if it could be called that. Less noise, less jostling, less of a struggle. A moment of a sort of peace, though there was little enough chance to collect their thoughts.

On the other side of the flames, Amber and Sasha took the moment of universal retreat to make their move. They had hoped to get away during the fight, but there had been no way to escape. There were too many people, and no route to safety. They had been about to return to their hideout in the building they had just left, but the first fire bomb turned both their minds to other plans. Being trapped inside a dry old building when there were fire bombs being hurled about seemed worse than insane. Panicked, they had waited for some kind of chance, and it had come with that second firebomb. As the wall of flame leapt up, and the battling forces withdrew, Sasha and Amber held hands and ran. Nobody seemed to notice them, and they headed with single-minded determination for an adjoining street. Only once did they hesitate, when a Loco swung to face them with his rifle upraised - but somewhere a shot rang out, and he fell without a sound. Amber gulped.

"Don't think about it." Sasha started to pull her away, but something had caught her attention through the flames. Ebony. She was as recognisable as ever - small, but powerful, and filled with the confidence and glow of regal authority. The flames painted in red on her face were the same - the black stripe across her eyes and the highlighted tumble of her wild hair. She hadn't seen Amber, for her eyes were elsewhere, focused solely upon the companion beside her. Amber thought, for a moment, that it was Bray, and her heart gave a leap - it looked so like him. He had the height, and the single long plait growing from shaggy, mostly short hair. The same build, but - was it the same face? A black stripe across his eyes marked him as Ebony's partner, and a few fingers of painted flame highlighted his jaw and one cheek. As Amber watched, transfixed, Ebony reached out a hand to him, and he took it, swinging up a bloodstained staff onto his shoulder. Not Bray then. Bray would never paint his face like a Loco, or stride so surely into battle alongside Ebony. Would he? Not a battle like this one, where all was chaos and death, and Tribe Fury were so surely winning? Bray made sensible plans, and fought sensible battles, and he wouldn't follow Ebony into the place where the fighting was thickest. Responding finally to Sasha's urgent tugging on her hand, she ran with him to the nearest adjoining street, and then on down it to peace and stillness. They carried on running until everything was just a distant echo, and then at last they rested. Amber didn't know if she was glad or sorry that the person she had seen couldn't possibly have been Bray. It might have been nice to have got confirmation that he was still alive, even if it was in that terrible place. As it was she was still in the dark about his fate. Perhaps she always would be.

When Ebony had reached out for Bray's hand, he had taken it without thinking. He had forgotten that he hated her. Such things were unimportant. He had not seen the figures on the other side of the wall of flame, and even if he had there would have been no way to reach them. Tribe Fury was everywhere now, save where the flames were barrier enough on their own. He was trapped and he knew it. Trapped, with Ebony and a handful of survivors, with flames circling slowly about them. There wasn't time to think about how bloody stupid this idea had always been, or about what might be about to happen. He couldn't let himself care. Buoyed up by unaccountable enthusiasm from his remaining allies, and trying to banish the visions of Martin from his mind, he was barely aware of his own voice calling out the famous old Loco battle cry. He could hear Zoot chanting it loudest of all of them, and could have sworn that he could see his brother up ahead beckoning him on to continue the fight. That probably wasn't a very good sign, a part of him realised. Seeing dead people; preparing to race headlong for the enemy ranks. He didn't think about it though. He just held Ebony's hand, and went on - right into the very vision of chaos.

Chapter Text

Private Michaels had seen fighting and death before. Small skirmishes, a few executions. Some of the minor altercations that had, so one-sidedly, been fought during the take over of the city. Having been sent away with his unit to watch over the fever-struck Amber up in the hills, however, meant that he had missed a good part of that violence, and the battle that raged around him now was the first true such clash that he had ever seen. The other Furies seemed so certain of victory, and it was true that there were vastly greater numbers on their side, but to Michaels victory was an impossible concept to grasp. Reality itself was hard enough to grasp just now. A grenade blast made his ears bleed, and destroyed two of his companions in the blink of an eye. Where was the reality in that? He slipped on the remains of one of them and almost fell, though the grim accident saved his life, for a bullet passed above his head so close that he thought he felt his hair curl and singe in its heat. If he had been standing upright he would have been killed instantly. It was all too much, too impossible for him to comprehend. For the first time since the death of his mother, years before the coming of the Virus, he felt on the verge of tears.

"Keep that gun up. Get up on higher ground and see if you can pick them off." He didn't recognise the person shouting at him, but he recognised authority when he heard it, even if he could hear it only faintly through his bleeding ears. He stumbled up on to a broken wall, and stared out at the sea of figures below him. They were hitting each other with their guns, shooting at random, using knives and stones and anything else that was available to them. The enemy, in their wild face paint, and with their colourful clothes, shouted intermittently about power and chaos. It was certainly chaos that he was seeing now. He levelled his rifle, picking targets without firing. The girl in the centre of the churning mass - the small, pretty girl in her mid-teens, with the aura of leadership about her. Kill her and it might all be over, his training told him. Kill her and the enemy would disperse, with the fighting ended. It would also be a reasonable guarantee that there would be no future rematch.

He didn't see the stone that dropped him from his perch. Didn't even feel it, beyond the knowledge that something had hit him. It struck him in the shoulder, numbing his arm and causing him to drop the rifle before he had a chance to find out whether or not he would ever have fired it. He watched it fall, reached out to catch it, fumbled - fell. The ground rushed up to meet him and he hit hard, in a puddle of rainwater and blood. He tasted the saltiness of both, and spat ferociously. For all he knew it was the blood of a friend in his mouth, and he had to fight to keep control. Somehow he made it to his feet, but only to the concussive blast of another grenade. It didn't sound as loud as the first one, but his ears still sang. He breathed in dust, and smelt blood so strongly that he felt ready to be sick. Somebody had picked up his rifle and was trying to shoot him with it, and he was trying to find somewhere to hide, and he could no longer hear anything, and-- Another explosion knocked him to the ground. He struggled for a moment, certain that he would be trampled if he stayed where he was, but the ground seemed to be moving, and his head was spinning, and together they seemed determined to leave him lying helpless in the mud. He scrabbled hopelessly for a few moments, unable to find the equilibrium he needed in order to stand. Somebody kicked him in the head, though he thought that it was only an accident. It was the incentive he needed to struggle to his knees, though for some time he couldn't manage to get any further than that. Only when something rolled past him, and he realised that it was a smoke blackened head, did he make it to his feet. He started to run then. Behind him he heard more explosions. Glancing back once he saw flames, heard screams, saw figures moving in the very heart of the fire - but he didn't look for long. Drenched in blood, sick as though he would never again be well, eyes opened wide in abject terror, he ran as fast as his twelve year old legs would carry him. He would be shot for desertion if the others caught him, and he didn't believe for a moment that they would not. He just didn't care. The world could dispose of him as it chose - he just wanted to get away from the terrible place behind him.

KC and Chloe had heard the sounds of battle, and were trying to find out what was going on. A fight was possibly a good sign; a movement on the part of the resistance; and they both wanted to see if there was anything that they could do to help.

"It sounds pretty intense," whispered Chloe. KC nodded.

"They're using guns and grenades. Mad."

"It's the Locos, remember? Or at least, the resistance are supposedly Locos, so this must be them." She shivered slightly. "And you know how the Locos fight."

"Yeah." KC sounded as though he still had a certain respect for their old enemies, with their madness and thirst for chaos. Chloe rolled her eyes.

"I didn't mean to be all complimentary about them. I meant that they're crazy."

"Yeah, well if they're getting something done, who cares? And anyway, we--" KC broke off, pulling Chloe into the shadows. "Ssh. Look."

"It's one of Tribe Fury!" They watched as a boy, no older than themselves, came stumbling down the alley towards them. He was covered in blood and was moving erratically, his speed changing, his direction wavering. He looked exhausted, but he didn't stop. Not until he had run some distance past the hiding pair, until he reached a point where the alley took a ninety degree turn to the left. He didn't seem to be able to adjust to the change in direction, and after running straight into an unyielding wall, he stumbled back a few steps, shot a terrified look back the way he had come, then sobbed and fell down on all fours. Chloe gasped.

"He looks--"

"Yeah, well he's the enemy so who cares." Seeing her move towards the boy, KC tried to grab hold of her and pull her back. "Chloe!"

"We should talk to him." She hurried over, but her gentle words and coaxing had no effect on the fallen soldier. He shook his head.

"Crazy. Everything's crazy. Can't hear. Can't see. All dead."

"Tribe Fury are all dead?" asked KC, but the boy didn't answer, at least directly.

"Fools, thinking they could fight back. So outnumbered. And the guns, and then the fire. No chance. Should be glad, but... I don't know." He looked up suddenly, grabbing Chloe's arm. "Don't let them see you. Tribe Fury kill. They'll kill everybody. They have killed everybody, and they'll want to kill me too now. Just run. Keep away. Everybody's dead."

"The resistance," decoded KC, rather unnecessarily. "The fighting...?"

"Sounds like it's just as well that we didn't get there." Chloe turned her head towards the sounds of the battle. "I suppose they're mopping up survivors."

"So much for the revolution." KC kicked the wall, and immediately wished that he hadn't. "Damn! I thought-- It's because it's the Locos. If that was Lex out there, then--"

"Lex? He hasn't exactly got an impressive resistance underway, has he." Chloe sighed, noisily and with anger. "We should leave here. Get as far away from the fighting as possible. We don't want to be caught up in any reprisals."

"True." KC didn't sound as though his heart was in a retreat, but he had the sense not to object. "Come on then."

"Not just the two of us! We can't leave him here, can we. He said Tribe Fury wanted to kill him." She shrugged. "Besides, he might be useful."

"But he's the enemy! Leave him here, Let the locals look after him." KC smiled unpleasantly at the thought, but Chloe just glared.

"He's coming," she said, and bent down to guide Michaels gently to his feet. "Come on. You're safe now."

"You're speaking, but I can't hear you." He frowned at her, wondering how she managed to look so gentle. "But thank you. I think."

"Just come on." She started to lead him around the bend in the alley, and after a while KC followed. It all seemed crazy to him, but maybe Chloe was right and this boy could be useful. One way or another they would find out soon enough.

Stories of the battle didn't take long to filter through the city. Some saw what was going on, hidden nearby as Sasha and Amber had been. Others heard about it during the course of the night, or the days that followed, or from the official notifications courtesy of Tribe Fury itself. In the Mall, however, Jack heard about it perhaps sooner than anybody. He had been working for some time on one of the old radios left behind in the Mall's electrical goods store, adapting it in the hope of picking up the many broadcasts between members of the enemy forces. It wasn't a difficult task, but it had taken some time to track down all the Fury wavebands, and ensure that the radio could quickly and reliably find them all. He was listening now as word of the battle spread; as reinforcements were called in; as seemingly every Tribe Fury soldier in the city was called in for one last, great rout to destroy the rebels utterly. It was some time before he noticed that he was no longer alone in his room, and he looked up to see Trudy and Pride standing in the doorway.

"The Locos," he told them, in case they hadn't heard enough to be sure. "They attacked Tribe Fury tonight."

"Idiots." Pride turned away, shaking his head. "They have just a few dozen people, according to Racha. It's insanity to go up against the enemy with so few people. No wonder Racha thinks that--"

"I don't care what Racha thinks. He's one of the enemy too, remember?" Trudy started hurrying away, thinking, perhaps, of her old days with the tribe, and wondering if any of her old friends had been involved in the battle. Ebony certainly would have been.

"What's wrong?" Lazing in the main lobby, Lex looked up as she passed. She hesitated. Stories of battle and carnage were always apt to stir Lex up, but he would have to find out soon enough. She sat down, avoiding Tai-San's eyes.

"A war," she said quietly. "If it can be called that. The resistance. The Locos, you know. They attacked Tribe Fury tonight. Jack just heard about it on his radio."

"They did what?" Lex rose to his feet as though suddenly charged by a violent electrical flow. "How many of them?"

"Nowhere near enough." Trailing after Trudy, Pride was muttering about Racha and his opinion of the Locos and their hopeless cause. "They have no organisation, no mass support, nothing but their own energy and enthusiasm. It was a massacre. Tribe Fury are wiping the last of them out as we speak."

"Looks like all Zoot's followers are mad." Luke caught Trudy's fierce glare and blushed heavily, staring at the ground. Jack shook his head.

"They're not mad. Well... yes, okay. They're mad. But they must have had some reason for doing this. Something other than suicide. The Locos were never that mad. They wouldn't just kill themselves like that would they?"

"No." Trudy knew Ebony, even if she didn't know who else ran under the Loco banner these days. "They must have thought they could make the others sit up and take notice. See if Tribe Fury could be taken by surprise, or prove that... I don't know. That it's possible to stand up to them or something. But Luke's right. They are mad, they must be."

"At least they tried." Aiming a violent kick at the old fountain which must have hurt, Lex began a furious pacing. "They're out there doing something, and we're sat in here letting Racha feed us like his tame dogs. Letting him feed us up in the hope that we'll become his own personal entertainment division, with a rebellion to order. The Locos are the ones doing something worth doing."

"Dying is worth doing?" Tai-San shook her head. "No Lex. Only when it's for something worthwhile. How can such a suicide mission be worthwhile?"

"Because it's better than doing nothing at all! They went out there and they decided to show Tribe Fury that not everybody is prepared to sit back and do nothing in this city! They got out there and had a fight, and even if they did lose - even if every single one of them is dead - at least they bloody well tried! Lex's eyes were filled with the lights of battle, and it was painfully obvious to the others that he very much wished he had been there, helping the Locos in their strike. "That should have been us. We should have been doing something like that, instead of spending all this time hiding ourselves away like cowards!" Trudy shook her head.

"It was crazy, Lex. It wasn't heroic, and we're not cowards for not trying the same. What exactly did they achieve out there, except for probably getting innocent people executed as a reprisal? Even if Tribe Fury were caught by surprise - and I doubt that they were - it obviously didn't last long, did it. All that the Locos achieved was death. That always was likely to become their epitaph one day. "

"Trudy's right." Beginning to worry that her husband might be about to do something stupid, Tai-San used her most calming voice to speak her own piece. "Lex, they didn't achieve anything. They were destroyed. It's just like we've been hearing from Racha. This is all flash and fire and no lasting substance. They've accomplished nothing."

"Except to prove that the resistance is too small to do anything significant," put in Jack. "Any serious movement needs to be a twenty times the size if it's going to stand any chance of winning."

"And we're going to help make it twenty times the size if we're hiding in here, are we?" Lex sounded disgusted, with himself and with the rest of them. "Are we're going to do anything of use to anybody if we won't even stick our heads outside the door? Racha thinks we're the best chance this city has. He's one of the enemy, and he seems to have more faith in us than we do."

"He doesn't think we've got a chance." Pride sounded tired with the whole affair, and particularly with Racha and his talking. "He just thinks that we've got more chance than the current lot. He knows we were at the heart of the fight against the Chosen; but that wasn't just us, was it. It was Bray and Amber with you on the outside, with a lot of other support. Plus the others who were helping on the inside. Alice, Ellie, Salene. In the end the whole city was behind us. We don't stand a chance unless we can make something like that happen again."

"Then we've got to make it happen, haven't we." Lex was already heading for the nearest exit, and the clarity and ferocity on his face was horribly clear. Tai-San's eyes opened wide.

"Lex!" She ran after him, but his speed and single-mindedness was such that he was not to be stopped. "Lex, where are you going?"

"To join in!" It was clear that he hadn't thought it through. He had no idea how he was going to meet with the Locos, or persuade them to let him join; always supposing that they were still alive to ask.

"Lex!" Tai-San caught his arms. "This is crazy. You can't go out there!"

"Pride goes out every week to meet with Racha. He's still in one piece."

"Racha has the local guards moved away so that the route is clear for the meeting every week! And besides, things have changed now. Do you think for one moment that they're going to sit back and rest on their laurels after what happened today? They'll want to make sure that nobody else gets any ideas."

"I don't care, Tai-San! I'm sick of cowering in here like a frightened child. I'm sick of letting the world - and the resistance - go by without me. I'm sick of doing nothing, while my city gets shot up and battered and enslaved by these arrogant little sods who think that they own the place. Well I'm not hiding any longer."

"Lex you're angry." Wandering out from the sidelines as though only just arriving at the Mall, Pride tried to put a friendly hand on Lex's shoulder. It was shrugged violently away. "Look, we're all frustrated. We know how you feel. Why wouldn't you want to get out of here? But this way you're only going to get yourself killed. We have to let things cool down for a bit. Then after that--"

"Then after that, nothing. In a few days the rest of the resistance will be dead. Just like Racha said, they don't stand a chance. Any of them who weren't killed tonight will either be in custody tomorrow, or on display in pieces somewhere instead. And then it's all be over. It'll take the heart out of the city. If anything's going to be done, the initiative needs to be taken now."

"How? By one man on his own, acting like he's got a death wish? How exactly are you going to get people behind you? The Independents are in hiding for a reason, Lex. There aren't enough of us to--"

"I'm not just talking about the Independents. I'm talking about the others. The ones who have registered, but who never wanted anything more to do with Tribe Fury than we did. All those kids out there who are facing a reduction of food rations because of the uprising, or who can expect to see their friends killed as part of the reprisals. All those people who have to work like slaves every day. They're the ones that we have to get on our side. Can't you see that? They're the ones that we have to grab the attention of."

"You're not going to grab their attention by getting yourself shot," commented Jack. Lex glared daggers at him and he backed down immediately. Sarcastic Jack might be; but brave enough to stay that way in the face of Lex's wrath he was not.

"Then I'll just have to not get shot, won't I." He looked over at Tai-San for a moment, almost as though he was reconsidering; but she knew straight away that he was not. He really was going.

"Lex..." It was one last try, but all that she got for it was a hard look that might have been trying to be a smile, underneath the anger and frustration. Then abruptly he was gone. She thought about going with him, and almost did, but the quiet voice inside of her that always kept her grounded was too powerful to be infected with Lex's rage. She backed slowly away. Trudy took her hand, but she didn't notice it. She was thinking only of Lex, and of the fact that in all likelihood she had seen him for the last time.

Chapter Text

He didn't know where he was going at first. Part of his instincts wanted to take him straight to the hotel, even if it was just to shout his anger at the Furies stationed inside. He wanted to get hold of a gun and shoot the place up, or commandeer one of the tanks - by whatever means - and blast his way through some of the roadblocks. Too long being inactive left him desperate to prove his worth in some explosive fashion, but the few scraps of good sense that remained to him forced him to be a little more circumspect. He had every intention of heading for the hotel though. It was the centre of all of this, and he had to make some kind of strike against it. Maybe it didn't matter if it was doomed to failure. That hadn't stopped the Locos from making their presence felt; from shaming him for his own passivity. He had to do something that mattered, even if it was the last thing he did.

"Better dead than cowering under a rock." He didn't realise that he had spoken the words aloud, although the streets were almost silent now, and his voice rang out clearly enough. Surprised by how quiet everything was, he began to move forwards, keeping to the edge of the street and listening out for any sign of the presence of others. So much for added security, he thought. Where was everybody? Where were the cars and the patrols? The tanks and the guards and the snipers? It was as though Tribe Fury had quite suddenly packed up their toys and gone away. Keeping one eye on the roofs of the buildings, and one eye on the windows around him, he progressed quickly. Lex had always possessed a certain craftiness, but still he was not known for his tendency to plan ahead. He was reacting without any thought beyond his desire to do something more constructive than hiding; his desperation to free himself from the demeaning dependence upon Racha. He just walked, blindly and stiffly, until the anger and frustration inside of him finally reached boiling point. He gave in to it then, hurling rocks and other debris at the buildings around him; smashing the already broken windows; hauling up a manhole cover, and using it to set about an abandoned car. He left it a misshapen wreck, though he didn't feel any the better for it. Damn the resistance. Damn them for doing what he hadn't managed to do, and damn them for failing. He was furious with himself for having spent so long sitting in the Mall accomplishing nothing, speaking to nobody, making no attempt to form his own resistance. He was angry that somebody else had taken the initiative, and had even gone so far as to mount an attack upon the enemy. But why do something so suicidal? Why take on so impossible a task? They were trying to make some grand gesture, he realised; some great statement that would show the others in the city that not everybody was beaten and cowed. He wondered if Ebony had been in the fight. Suicide wasn't really her game, but she was a Loco at heart and always would be. That meant chaos, and the news that had come over Jack's little radio said chaos if nothing else. The Locos had been their old selves tonight, fighting tooth and nail, fearless in the face of certain defeat, screaming their eternal slogan at their far less colourful foes. Lex could see it all even though he hadn't been there; even though he hadn't listened to the radio. Rows of Locos with their faces painted in bright hues, anxious for glory and excitement. He remembered how he had longed to be one of them, in earlier days, and felt those old yearnings reawaken. If he had joined the Locos all those months ago, that would be him now making that stand. Him trying to make the city sit up and take notice. Him ready to die rather than spend his days hiding like a rat. Like a Mall Rat. He flung the man hole cover far away from him, watching it clatter to a noisy halt some way off. What had happened to the Mall Rats? They had fought the Locos and Tribe Circus; found the cure for the Virus, led the city back to civilisation; fought off the Chosen... and now they were scattered to the four winds, with the remainder of them hiding as though afraid, and depending on an enemy for their food. He felt so ashamed that it made his head burn, and made him wonder if he was ready to cry with humiliation.

He didn't know where he was heading. He wanted a fight, but by the look of things everybody had been called away from their posts to help bring the rebellion to an end. Clearly the leaders of Tribe Fury expected no trouble from elsewhere in the city. They felt safe to move away their guards, certain that everybody else was too afraid to start any trouble. The thought made Lex even more angry, but he had nothing left to throw. He punched a wall instead, not feeling the pain of his grazed skin. Was Ebony still alive, he wondered, or had the Furies captured her yet? Killed her? Was she lying with her fallen friends in some little street, ready to be displayed as a lesson to everybody? Lex thought about the promise of reprisals, and wondered how many Furies had died in the battle. Enough, he thought. Enough to make the reprisals terrible. The people of the city would be angry, but probably at the resistance rather than at Tribe Fury. They would look even less favourably upon any future attempt to drive out the enemy. Lex muttered a few choice words. Damn Ebony for doing what he hadn't been able to do. Damn the Locos for doing it now, when there was no chance of success. Damn the whole bloody city, himself included, for not rushing out to join the fight as soon as word of it spread, to join forces with the brave little band of Locos, and give them all a far greater chance of success. Tribe Fury might be gone by now, if the city had taken up the cause. They might all be on their way back to freedom, to their new brand of normality. Instead he was standing in a deserted street, wondering how many resistance members might have survived, knowing that many of his fellow city dwellers wouldn't, once Tribe Fury were through with their revenge. He turned to punch the wall again, eyes misted over with sheer rage - and saw a group of people standing in a row nearby. They were dressed in ragged leather and wore bold tribal markings, and he recognised them only after a moment's confused gaping. Wildcats, the ones that Bray and Ebony had spoken of. The ones that even the Locos were afraid of, who would supposedly tear a man to shreds during a battle. They all carried knives, unsheathed and ready for use. The blades somehow contrived to gleam, despite the darkness of the ageing night. Lex scowled at the assembled group.

"What do you want?" He really wasn't in the mood for a confrontation. Not with these people. It was Tribe Fury that he wanted to fight, and if they weren't going to satisfy him he would prefer just to wander alone and feel sorry for himself, and stoke up the fuel of his already impressive anger and self-reproach. The tribe before him made no sound.

"Just get out of here. I'm not in the mood for games." His eyes drifted over their faces, all set in the same expression. All shockingly cold. It was disturbing, and he felt his spine beginning to tingle. The stories, however hurried, that he had heard about these people came back to him now, and he remembered how he had chosen not to believe them at the time. Bray seemed to know so many of the tribes, and to have had run ins with all of them at some time, and Lex had long ago convinced himself that most of the stories were made up. Standing here now, though, facing this band of Wildcats, he was sure that the stories about them had been true.

"This is our place." Taking one slow step forward, the middle Cat waved his knife menacingly. Lex felt the urge to smirk.

"Your place. Everybody in this city thinks they own somewhere. A street. A cellar. A lousy sewer. But we don't own any of it anymore."

"This is our place." Now that he was closer it was clear that there was something wrong with the spokesman's eyes. The pupils were uneven, and there was a glassiness to his stare. Whatever the guy was on, clearly it made sure that he was never going to give a damn about anything Lex had to say.

"This is Tribe Fury's place, same as the rest of the city." Lex wanted a drink. Failing that, maybe it would be a good idea to try something of whatever it was that had given the Wildcats their unfocused eyes. The whole gang of them moved towards him then, and he smiled crookedly.

"Yeah. Tribe Fury's place. All of it. They own every building, every road, and every grimy, miserable tunnel underneath it." He let his crooked smile become a challenging grin. "They'll come for you, soon enough - because none of us helped out Ebony. The whole bloody resistance is dead because the rest of us hid indoors, so everything belongs to Tribe Fury." He folded his arms, rather pleased with himself for having found the opportunity to voice his feelings to some kind of audience - even if it was an audience whose only interest in him was to see him filleted. They moved towards him again, one step closer, and smiled in perfect unison.

"We don't like trespassers," announced the spokesman. Lex nodded. He had rather come to that conclusion himself. There was a fight coming now without a doubt, and he found himself beginning to look forward to it. There were six of them, all with knives, and he had left the Mall with nothing but his fists to use as a weapon. It seemed unlikely that he would have much a of a chance, but he couldn't make himself care that much. He just wanted something to hit. Something more satisfying than walls, old cars and broken windows.

"Well I'm not going anywhere." He unfolded his arms, ready for them even if he didn't have a chance of beating them. "You want me gone, you're going to have to move me."

"We won't move you. We'll leave you here." The spokesman spun his knife idly, the motion mechanical. "In pieces."

"In strips," added another.

"And chunks," put in a third. Lex had to smile.

"And then you'll eat me I suppose. Just come and fight me then, if that's what you're after. I'll--"

They came at him so hard that he didn't get the chance to breathe - all six of them at once, with their knives a whirling, blurred dance of metal. He dodged to one side, suddenly worried, and felt a knife blade graze his shoulder. Something else caught him sharply on the forehead and the world spun disconcertingly. He punched at something, but whatever it was didn't yield, and almost immediately something else hit back. The air rushed from his lungs and stars danced dizzyingly in his brain. A knife scraped at his cheek.

"No need to all come at once." Whatever his earlier lack of concern, now that they were upon him he wanted very much to survive. It was easier said than done. A powerful blow hit him in the side and he stumbled, and looked up into a tangle of descending fists. It looked like chaos, but there was a weird order to it. Somehow each fist came at him separately out of the tangle. Each fist found its own target. After that the first knife found its target too, and he knew that he didn't have long. He punched outwards and upwards; thought that he heard one of the knives fall. Somebody punched him in the head, and he tried to roll with the blow. It didn't work. The tangle of hands were grabbing at him, holding him, threatening to tear him apart before the sharp little blades could get their own chance to do the same. He tried kicking, but they only kicked him back, and far harder than he could manage. He realised then that he couldn't cause them any pain. They were dead to it. It showed in their glassy eyes and the expressions that stayed vacant even as they were trying to cut his throat. He stumbled backwards, came up hard against a wall, and felt his heart sink. Too late he realised what a bad idea it had been to storm out of the Mall in such a rage. He thought about Tai-San, and wondered how long she would wait before she realised he wasn't going to return.

"Need a hand?" The voice came from somewhere above him, loud and bright like somebody saying a cheery good day in some pleasant place of meeting. Lex couldn't see where it came from, but before the sentence was over one of his attackers was being jerked backwards off balance. He saw the Wildcat disappear; heard a roar of rage from one of the others in the tribe. Another of them was pulled away, and Lex found that he could move again. He threw a punch at somebody, dodged a knife, and quite suddenly saw the rest of the Wildcats hurled aside. He stared down at them, sprawled on the ground with their empty faces fringed with hate, and their peculiar eyes that never seemed to focus on anything. If it was possible to look ferocious and pathetic at once, these people managed it. He wiped a trail of blood away from his face, and turned to see who it was that had helped him.

"Craig." He was being offered a large hand by a tall boy of about seventeen who looked like he might once have been a school prefect. Certainly he was dressed in the remains of a good quality school uniform, complete with blazer and tie, with a striped school scarf looped loosely about his throat. The others with him were dressed the same way, all neat despite the fading condition of their clothes, acting very much like officious sixth-formers as they sent the sulking Wildcats on their way.

"Lex." He shook the proffered hand, and tried not to gape. "Thank you."

"No problem. It's not a good idea to hang around in Wildcat territory on your own. Usually they hunt in bigger packs than this, and if you meet a bigger bunch then you're a goner for sure. I've seen them rip a person to bits. Don't think there's any reason for it." He frowned suddenly. "Listen to me. Waffling about Wildcats with you bleeding all over the place." He took Lex's arm. "I don't think it's deep. It'd be bleeding a lot more if they'd got anything vital. Still, no sense in taking really unnecessary risks, is there. Come on back with us, and we'll soon get you fixed up." He scowled suddenly. "And I'm waffling again. Introductions, Craig, introductions. Meet my friends. Samantha, Sarah, David and Krishnan. We're the Badlanders."

"Badlanders?" Yet another tribe he had never heard of, but that Bray undoubtedly knew the entire history of. He would have scowled, had he not been increasingly aware that his face was beginning to swell. It hurt. So did his ribs, his arms, and pretty much everything else. "Look... I don't want to put you to any trouble. The streets aren't safe. We should--"

"We'll be inside soon enough; and besides, the streets are plenty safe right now. Tribe Fury are off over towards the hotel, seeing off the last of the resistance. They won't make it back this way before the morning." He smiled coldly. "Nice to know they think we're such a threat, isn't it. Still, that's just one of the things we have to talk about. Right?"

"It is?" Lex watched through blackening eyes as one of the Badlanders made a fair attempt at a field dressing on his stabbed arm. He couldn't quite work out what was going on here. Friendliness was something that he had learnt to distrust, and Craig seemed to smile too much.

"You're Lex," the other boy said, with a smile even bigger than any Lex had seen him attempt yet. "You're one of the Mall Rats. We've been trying to get in touch with you people for ages, but word had it that the Mall had been destroyed. Roof falls and fires and goodness only knows what else? You're not easy people to get hold of anymore."

"You... want to speak to us?" Now Lex really was suspicious. Craig was still smiling though, in a manner that was strangely infectious. Lex didn't try giving in to the temptation to smile back. He was fairly certain that if he tried it his lips would split. He wondered just how bad his face looked.

"Of course we want to speak to you. The Mall Rats led us all against the Chosen. Maybe the rest of the city has forgotten that, but we haven't. Maybe the rest of the city didn't see what the Locos did tonight, but we did. I always hated them, but tonight... tonight I wanted to be one of them, and I think you probably feel the same way." He looked suddenly awkward, like a child trying to talk to a hero. "We're not exactly the biggest tribe in the city, but we have managed to forge some pretty good ties with a few other Independents. Just good luck really. Anyway, we'd hoped... Well it won't be safe for a while after tonight, but I think maybe, one day... with somebody we all know we can trust to help lead the way... somebody like a Mall Rat perhaps?" He shrugged, apparently somewhat abashed. "I'm asking you if you want a chance at driving out Tribe Fury."

"You... what?" Lex licked his dry lips, and tasted far too much blood. It made him thirsty. "How many people are we talking about?"

"I don't know. There are about twelve Badlanders. Maybe half a dozen of the old tribes have showed an interest in getting together, mostly on the condition that the Mall Rats lead the way. You're the only tribe that everybody trusts. The only tribe that nobody's worried about being shafted by. Anyway, I guess there's maybe forty of us in total. It's not a lot, I know."

"But there should be more to come." Krishnan, a particularly good looking boy with the air of the intellectual about him, spoke with a deep and resonant voice. Craig nodded.

"It's just going to take talking, isn't it. I mean, it's difficult, but once you get the ball rolling it's surprising how easily things come together. And like I said, we need somebody we can trust to get that done."

"Yeah." Lex thought again of all the weeks he had spent sulking in the Mall, not getting anything done at all, and felt another burst of anger at himself. He kicked it quickly aside. If other people could get things moving, so could he. He had acted like an idiot in leaving the Mall, but Fate had just seen fit to give him one hell of a second chance, and had done a fair job of swelling his ego in the process. He smiled to himself, and regretted it instantly when his mouth filled with blood. "If I had somebody to work with who knows where to find the Independents, and get me the chance to speak to some of them... I guess maybe we could drum up some support." He frowned suddenly. "But you haven't exactly proved that I can trust you."

"Can't really, can we. Not just like that." Craig smiled at him with such openness that for a moment it was quite off-putting. "You have to take our word, Lex. And you have to take it quickly. Tribe Fury might not be around, but you never know who might be spying for them; and besides, there could well be other Wildcats in the area. We have to get moving. Come with us or don't. It's your choice."

"Yeah." He thought about the possibility of a trap; set by Tribe Fury or who knew who else; and he also thought about how big a fool he would be if he missed out on this chance to finally do something to fight back. He had mooched and sulked long enough. Strangely it never occurred to him how this opportunity had arisen just at the moment when he had most wanted it to; that in so many ways it seemed too good to be true. He thought only about being useful, and getting his chance to be a warrior again; about his timely rescue, and the promise of an army of Independents awaiting leadership. Lex had never been great at thinking ahead. If he had been, everything might have been different.

Chapter Text

They ran until they felt that they had no more strength inside them, but even then they couldn't stop. Nobody else was in sight; if anybody else had survived there was no sign of it. No way of knowing which road they had run down, or what state they were currently in. Ebony didn't want to care, but did. They were her people; her tribe. She had only just found them again, and now it seemed that they were utterly destroyed.

"Down here." She grabbed Bray by the arm and nearly dragged him off his feet as she pulled him through a half collapsed doorway. Beyond was a room with half of its floor missing, a fire-ravage cellar gaping beneath. They stumbled over broken rafters to a back door, and out into a tiny, dark alley. Bray collapsed against the wall.

"We can't stay here for long," he told her. "They were right behind us." She nodded.

"I know. But I need to get some breath back."

"You look like hell."

"Yeah, thanks. You look great yourself."

"I know." He put up a shaky hand in an habitual movement to brush back the hair from his forehead, and realised that his face and hair were wet. Blood, of course - what was not so certain was the source. He knew that his shoulder was bleeding from a knife wound, but he didn't know about his head. It was just as likely to be somebody else's blood, still wet after fountaining out of whoever it had once belonged to. There had been a heavy grenade attack when Tribe Fury had finally decided to end things, and as many of their own men had been caught up in it as had Locos. So many people, and so very much blood. "What the hell happened? I mean... I thought... There weren't supposed to be that many of them, Ebony."

"We knew they'd come to face us when they knew we were coming. We knew they'd want to knock us down to size." She shook her head. "But I didn't think they'd be so ruthless. There was no need to send that many people. Half the number could have fought us off, and then at least we'd have had a chance to--"

"To what? Come out of it in one piece? That's exactly what they didn't want us to do." He looked at the mess of blood and smudged paint now on his hand. "We should have thought. Should have realised."

"Yeah." She was avoiding his eyes. "Do you think any of the others made it?"

"As prisoners, possibly. Otherwise no. I'm pretty sure we were the only ones who made it past that first line of soldiers." He started to lead the way onwards along the alley. "Come on. There are people all over the place. We have to get away."

"Find another tunnel entrance. See if we can't find some kind of refuge." She nodded, following him as quickly as she could. "Yeah. I suppose that makes sense."

"Refuge?" He almost shouted the word, and had to adjust his volume quickly. "There won't be any refuge, Ebony. They'll find us, or they'll kill everybody they can get their hands on in the meantime. And the reprisals..." He was shaking his head, ignoring the blood that showered out of his hair onto the walls. "Why didn't we think? They said they'd kill civilians if any of their own people were killed. Ebony, there's going to be a massacre. Another massacre. Only this time we'll be responsible. We have to--"

"What? Turn ourselves in? You think that's going to make any difference? Only thing that'll do is get us killed first. No, we have to... I don't know. Show people that we're still here. Still willing to fight despite what's happened. Show people that--"

"What, Ebony?!" Suddenly he no longer cared about making a noise, and the words tumbled out of him at furious volume. "This was all supposed to show people that we could stand up to Tribe Fury, but all it's shown is that we can't. They wiped us out. We didn't stand a chance."

"With more people--"

"Nobody is going to join us now. We've just signed the death warrants of a lot of innocent people. The only thing we can hope for from the rest of the people in this city now is a lynching. Thanks to you they hated me anyway. Now they hate you too. Congratulations."

"Hey, I wasn't the only person leading the charge today. I wasn't the only person that the Locos were following. Who was out there at the front, leading the charge, wearing his brother's colours? Not me, Bray."

"I know." He looked over at her, battered and bruised under the blood, limping heavily on her right leg, cradling her left arm. She had lost her gun, half of her jacket had been torn or burned from her body, and he could see the sorrow in her eyes without needing to search for it. She was utterly miserable.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this," he offered, by way of a peace offering. She tried a wry smile, but had to stop. Her lips were split, and it hurt too much to stretch them.

"I thought it might achieve something," she said softly. "I don't know what exactly. The Guardian kept talking about Zoot, and what he would do, and I knew that he was right. Zoot never worried about what might happen. He just did things."

"Which is how he got himself killed," Bray told her, his voice bitter. She nodded.

"I know. But I thought we'd run into a few ordinary patrols. I thought even if - when - we were defeated, we'd get out of there alive, and could flaunt some kind of success. Some kind of glory. We've been fighting them on and off for weeks, and we've always come out of it okay. Nobody ever died before."

"And this time everybody did." He saw her flinch, and felt very sorry for making such a remark. They were her friends, even if some of them had been recruited to the Loco ranks during her days as a Mall Rat. She hadn't known them all personally, but they had been Locos; and that made them friends and allies of a sort. Family almost. He thought about the few that been left back on guard with the Guardian at their headquarters, and hoped that they would find out what had happened soon enough to be able to make a run for it. They might be found, otherwise, if Tribe Fury's rout was extensive enough.

"Where are we going to go, Bray?" she asked. He reached out, not quite sure why, and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned gratefully into his embrace.

"I don't know," he told her. "The streets are full of Furies, and we can't trust the other tribes either. We have to face the fact that we might not be able to go anywhere." He cocked his head on one side. "I can hear gunfire."

"They're trying to flush us out."

"Yeah. They must know which direction we're heading in. We can't go back to base."

"And we'll never make it out of the sector. I can't think of anywhere near here where we can hide out. Do you think they'll try to take us alive?"

"Do you care?"

"I'm not afraid of dying, no. I just don't fancy being run to ground and shot. I can't run much further anyway. I think I've got some shrapnel in my leg."

"Yeah." It was impossible not to notice that her limp was getting worse.

"You could leave me here. Make a run for it. You might get--"

"I'm not leaving you." He was surprised at just how determined he was about that. Was this really the girl he had hated so much just a short time before? "We'll get out of this together, or we'll fight it out together."

"In an alley, with three good hands between us, and nothing but bricks to fight with?"

"Two good hands, as it happens." He managed a very bitter smile. "I might not be a proper Loco, Ebony - and I hope I never am - but I can be just as stubborn as Zoot when I have to be."

"I remember." She slowed to a stiff halt. "What are we running from, Bray?"

"We're not running. We're hobbling." He let her step away from him, so that they could look at each other properly.

"You know what I mean. We're running away from inevitabilities, and there's no point in doing that. We're getting weaker every step. We're both losing blood. Why keep running?"

"Let them catch up, you mean?"

"And maybe make a fight count for something, when we've still got enough strength left to try. Anyway, that's what I'm going to do. You can make up your own mind."

"You're nuts." There was a certain affection in his voice when he said it though, and she recognised the tone of his voice. It was the same way he had scolded Martin when he had tried riding his skateboard down the stairs in their old house. "But I've already told you that I'm not leaving you."

"Sure? Those guns are getting closer."

"Yeah."

"And we've still only got two good arms and three good legs between us."

"Not sure about the three good legs. But yeah." He smiled awkwardly. "Ebony..."

"If you're going to get sentimental on me Bray, now's really not the time."

"I wasn't going to be sentimental. I was going to tell you that you've done some bloody stupid things in your time, and some bloody horrific things too, and I've hated you a lot."

"Well thanks."

"You deserve it, and you know it. But all the same... We've been through a lot together, haven't we."

"I'll say."

"So... if anything happens... Well I've enjoyed some of it. And... whatever happens here... I hope..."

"That we have the chance to fight each other again?"

He shrugged. "Well, I can't think of anybody I'd rather fight. Or fight alongside."

"That might be the nicest thing you've said to me since school."

"I'll try to be nicer, if we get out of this." He smiled then, and she smiled back, ignoring the protests from her lips.

"I will hold you to that you know."

"Yeah." He reached out and took her hand. "Ready?"

"I hope so." And giving his hand a brief squeeze, she led the way back down the alley.

Chapter Text

Amber and Sasha didn't know what to do after escaping from the insanity that was the battle ground. They had run immediately for shelter, but it was a curiously bereft feeling that overtook them then. People had died - many people. They were used to that of course, and both had come to see death as something that held no terrors anymore. This battle - this massacre - was different though, and they both knew it. This was a struggle for freedom; a desperate struggle by a group of city-dwellers against a hated enemy. It had been a battle with at least one familiar face, too. Was Ebony now dead? Amber found it hard to decide how she would feel about that. They had never been close, but they had fought together to drive out the Chosen, and to try to rebuild the city. Now though... Ebony's take-over, her gradual rise as a tyrant, her banishment of her former allies - it was difficult to forgive such things quickly. Dying, though - dying changed a lot of things, even when you were supposed to be used to it all. If Ebony was dead it would be a great loss to the fight for freedom, even without letting personal feelings enter into things - and there was the person who had been with her, too. Amber wasn't able to shake off the memory of that wild-eyed young man with the war paint and hair dye, standing at Ebony's side like a consort. So many echoes of Bray. The ghost of him perhaps, passing through someone who looked so very like him; or perhaps the ghost had been Zoot's instead of Bray's.

They found a place to rest in the end - an old crèche or nursery school to judge by the decorations. An alphabet frieze wound its way around two walls, and giant elephants decorated a third. The tables and chairs were gone of course; off to make fires, or barricades, or just to be furniture somewhere else. The carpet remained though - blue hot air balloons, flying through a bluer sky, and piloted by smiling red teddy bears. It was reassuring somehow. Sasha made them a small fire by breaking off the doors of a cupboard fixed securely to one wall. There would be no notice taken of one more fire tonight, he reasoned, and Amber wasn't going to argue with him. The fire might not burn for long with so little to feed it, but it would be warm and bright for a while, and they could cook some food if they could convince themselves to eat anything. They didn't bother in the end, but sat side by side, their arms around each other's shoulders as they stared into the flames.

"It wasn't pretty," commented Sasha at last. Amber nodded.

"I didn't think I'd feel like this. It's not the first battle I've seen. I suppose it was the hopelessness of it all. They didn't stand a chance, did they."

"Not for a moment, no. I can't imagine trying something like that. I don't think I would ever be brave enough."

"Or stupid enough?"

"No." He shook his head, thinking back to the people caught up in the madness. "I don't think they were stupid. Just desperate, or determined. They probably didn't expect there to be so many of the enemy. Maybe they were just hoping for a small scale battle."

"Just shows us what we're facing, doesn't it. We can't make the mistake of only getting a few supporters, or of setting out before we're ready. If we do, we'll be just like those people that we saw tonight. What a mess."

"History is full of noble failures." Sasha, of course, knew half a dozen relevant stories. "People who wanted something, and fought for it even when they knew they didn't have a chance. People looking for freedom. It's the sort of thing that the city will remember, when Tribe Fury are defeated for good."

"Once upon a time, maybe. These days I honestly don't know. We're all so used to death and fighting, I can't see anybody being remembered for doing it now." She winced suddenly. "My baby is as restless as I am tonight."

"He can feel your unease."

"He?" She smiled at him. "Yesterday it was a she."

"I know, but I've always liked to change my mind a lot. It's an entertainer's privilege."

"Oh." She managed a short laugh. "He, then. What are we going to call him?"

"We?" He smiled then, gently and encouragingly. "Don't lose hope, Amber. By the time he's born, you could well be back with Bray again. They he'll be the one to help you choose a name for your son." He frowned. "Or daughter."

"Well make up your mind."

"Hey, it's your baby that keeps changing its gender." He laughed suddenly. "Good grief, it does dance about, doesn't it. I can feel it moving without even touching your stomach."

"It's either a great dancer or a great little fighter."

"And do you think it'll come out wearing war paint?"

"I don't know. So long as it doesn't come out looking like a Loco, I don't care. Don't forget who it had as an uncle."

"Zoot. Yes, of course. Can't say that I'm sorry I never got to meet him." Sasha looked away, over to one of the windows. He couldn't see through it of course, much less see the chaos left by the battle some miles away, but he turned his head to look all the same. "I wonder what would have happened tonight if Zoot had been out there to lead it?"

"The same. Whatever might have been said since, he was just a person. Just a kid. He might have been a little crazier than some, or a little more determined, but he wasn't infallible. I think he proved that, in the end, when he fell over the railings back at the Mall."

"Going to have to be better than that, aren't we."

"I don't know what we're going to do." She rested her hand on his shoulder momentarily, then lifted it up very suddenly. "Did you hear something?"

"Yes, I rather think I did. People?"

"Might be animals I suppose. There's no shortage of cats and dogs and things roaming the city you know."

"No. That was people." He stood up, going quickly towards the nearest window. It was too hard to see out into the darkened world, though, from inside a lighted room, and he shook his head in frustration. "I can't see anything."

"Might it be Tribe Fury? We're not supposed to still be in the city. If the wrong person sees us--"

"It's alright. We can always use that fight as an excuse. It's other tribes that I'm more worried about."

"Scavengers." She stood up, joining him by the window. "I shouldn't think there's many of them left, thanks to Tribe Fury. Can you still hear them?"

"I can't hear anything." He went slowly to the door. "They can't not know that we're in here though. Not with the firelight showing through the windows."

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know." He grinned at her, looking amiably childish as he did so. "You don't usually ask for my opinion. You usually do everything yourself."

"You did originally promise to look after me, you know. If we're about to be invaded by wild gangs of half-starved six year olds, you should be the one going to investigate, don't you think?"

"Well, okay. But if we are about to be overrun by wild gangs of half-starved six year olds, you better promise not to go adopting any of them. We've got problems enough just with the three of us to worry about."

"You don't think that our own little family of six year olds might be fun?"

"No." He tried once again to peer out into the dark night. "I only hope they are just little kids though. Them at least we might be able to fight them off."

"My brave warrior."

"Yeah." He smiled gently at her. "It's at times like these I wish I was a warrior. You'd be a lot safer if I was."

"Not necessarily. Anyway, we don't know who's out there yet, do we. We should probably be finding out."

They opened the door together, peering out into the darkness. Shapes were moving out there, there was no denying that. Three shapes, that froze when a shaft of light broke from the opened doorway. Smallish figures. Those of people probably no more than ten or twelve. Sasha stepped out of the nursery.

"There are a whole lot of us in here," he said, in as stern a voice as he could manage. "And I don't think that you want to try anything. So leave." None of the figures moved. He took another step, the flickering firelight highlighting his rough tumble of red hair, his tie-dyed purple shirt, and the striped scarlet trousers he had made himself. He swallowed hard when one of the figures detached itself from the others and took a few steps towards him. The light picked out a few features then - enough for him to see dark hair and a child's feminine face. He frowned. Was it familiar? And the look on her face - did she recognise him? Or think that she did, for the light was behind him, so she couldn't have seen his face. Another of them was coming forward too now; boyish and stocky, with green tinted hair. Another face that seemed to be familiar. It was opening its mouth, frowning, starting to speak; but even as his lips framed the question - "Sasha?" - Amber's voice was drowning him out.

"Chloe?" She was running past Sasha, and he didn't react quickly enough to stop her, or warn her of potential dangers. "KC?"

"Amber!" The young female voice almost squeaked in delight, and one of the figures rushed forward. "Amber! We've been so worried! When Bray came back on his own, and he was so worried because you'd been ill, and then everybody said it was impossible to leave the city and find you..." She hugged Amber hard. "The Mall didn't feel right without you there. With so many of the tribe missing." She pulled back, seeming to age and mature in those few seconds. "Nothing at the Mall is right anymore."

"Bray?" Amber didn't seem to have registered anything past that one word. "He's alive?"

"Bray?" Chloe was frowning up at her. "You don't... no, I suppose you wouldn't. Well--"

"Excuse me." Sasha came between them, affable face looking oddly closed. "But can we take this inside? Relative safety, you know? Plus very limited fuel being wasted."

"Yes. Of course." Amber looked past Chloe and KC to the other figure, hanging back outside the light. "Who's your friend?"

"Oh. Yeah." KC went over to collect him, leading back a small, dazed looking boy whose face was a mess of smeared paint, mud and blood. "He's a Fury deserter, but we can trust him, I'm sure of it. We sort of picked him up." He lowered his voice slightly. "I don't think he's quite all there."

"He's probably just shook up." Sasha took the boy's shoulders, guiding him towards the nursery. "And no wonder if he was caught up in that battle. Come on inside. Sit by the fire. I'm sure we can find something for you to eat."

"Food?" KC brightened immediately. "We've got some dried fish, and some seaweed too I think."

"And some shellfish," piped in Chloe. "Just nothing to cook anything on. We didn't want to stop to make a fire."

"Seafood? How on earth-?" Amber shook her head. "Never mind, Just come inside, and we'll talk about it over dinner. We have some wild vegetables, Should go well with some shellfish."

"I'll say." Sasha was practically rubbing his hands together with glee. "Some of the shore tribes do great things with shellfish. The traditional way is to eat them raw of course, but if you roast them in--" He stopped. "Yes, I know. Inside."

They made a good meal, for with the company now swelled and more hearty, both Amber and Sasha found their appetites renewed. They cooked the shellfish first, then ate them while the vegetables were roasting, the seaweed steaming gently, and the dried fish reheating just above the fire. Amber told her friends of how she had been reunited with Sasha, and nursed back to health by him, and how she had recovered her strength in a camp just outside the city. In their turn KC and Chloe told of Bray's return to the Mall with Ebony in tow; of the remaining Mall Rats' helplessness in doing anything to fight against Tribe Fury; of Lex's descent into anger and frustration; and of Bray's lengthening forays out into the subdued city in search of ever reducing supplies. The growing paranoia, the constant fear of going outside, and of Lex's eventual decision that some of them would have to do just that; how he had set out with Pride, Ebony and Bray, and how the others had waited, and waited - until, finally, KC and Chloe had given up and struck out on their own. Amber was angry with them for taking the risk, but she could see that both of them seemed to have grown from the experience. All the same, she hated to think of them being so close to that ghastly fight, even if it had provided them with the opportunity of helping the young boy now beside them - a boy who might just prove to be useful, if he knew anything about the workings of Tribe Fury. The boy himself - Michaels, he had managed to tell them, which seemed to strike at memory chords, though Amber didn't know why - was relaxing a little now, huddled close to the fire and struggling to dig the roasted shellfish from their hard little containers. Amber smiled at the top of his bent head, already plotting how he might be of use - when an image floated, unbidden, to the forefront of her mind. Ebony, in the midst of a battle, with a youth beside her who had reminded Amber so very much of Bray, even if he was wearing the war paint of a Loco, and carrying himself like a warrior. If Ebony and Bray had been together at the start of all of this, why shouldn't they be together still? Why assume that Ebony had been the only Mall Rat taking part in that battle against Tribe Fury? She felt her blood run cold.

"The battle," she said, almost not recognising her own voice, and startigly the others with the suddenness of her speech. "Did you know that Ebony was a part of it?"

"We did wonder." KC and Chloe exchanged a look, before KC continued the tale. "There's been a minor rebellion going on for a few weeks now, and the rumour has always been that Ebony was at the heart of it. I suppose if something happened when she and the others went out on their scavenging mission, she might have wound up not going back to the Mall, or she might have left later like we did. There's been no talk of the others though." He looked almost hurt. "There's been nothing on the grapevine about Lex. Nothing about him being in any of the fighting that's been going on."

"I saw Ebony," Amber said, eyes fixed on the fire now. "In the middle of the battle. There was somebody with her who looked just like Bray."

"There was?" Sasha looked up, startled. "When?"

"Remember the sheet of fire? Anyway, I didn't think it could be him - not with the paint, and not fighting alongside Ebony. I thought they hated each other now. But if they've been working together again, then why not fight together too?"

"Ebony rescued Bray from Tribe Fury the day all this started," supplied Chloe. "They seemed to be getting on quite well. With Lex and Pride being so sulky, and Lex's temper being so short, I guess maybe Bray and Ebony were talking more. He didn't want to be with Trudy and the baby so much because he was upset about you, and not knowing if your baby was okay."

"And Ebony was always there, I suppose." Amber's face was set like stone. "Always trying to be the perfect friend, at the perfect moment."

"Well she has always liked Bray." Chloe shrugged. "But KC and me left the Mall before the others got back from their scavenging mission." She looked pale. "Always supposing that they did get back. We haven't been back since to find out."

"They'll be alright, Chlo." KC managed to sound quite sure. "Ebony probably had enough, like us, and left the Mall later."

"And Bray might have gone with her then," added Sasha.

"He was pretty determined not to be doing nothing," added KC. "He really wanted to find you, Amber."

"Nice to be wanted," Sasha said brightly, giving Amber's hand a supportive squeeze. She squeezed back, but only after a moment.

"So it really could have been him," she said at last, her voice flat. "He was standing just a few feet away, and I didn't know it was him. And now..." She looked grey. "Now he's probably dead. Like all of them."

"Dead?" Chloe sounded tearful. "Bray can't be dead."

"They're all dead." Michaels raised his head from his food at last, face horribly pale, eyes empty and vague as their words took him back to the battlefield. "All of them. Blood and fire everywhere. Heads rolling. I saw them."

"Heads... rolling...?" Chloe looked almost as pale as he did. "Real heads?"

"Take it easy." Sasha reached out for Michaels, trying to calm the boy with a friendly smile and a gentle voice, but the young deserter was rigid now.

"Bodies everywhere," he said, his voice shaking. "We got word they were on the move... rebels... been blowing stuff up and fighting our troops. The order went out for all of the local units to go and meet them in battle, but it wasn't really a battle. You've never seen so much blood."

"Bray." Amber put her head in her hands, the food to which she had so been looking forward now forgotten completely. KC rescued it from the fire.

"We don't know he's dead," he said slowly, but he was not used to offering such tokens of support, and his voice lacked conviction. Sasha, still trying to comfort Michaels, looked helplessly at Amber. He didn't know what to say, and wasn't entirely sure whether she would want him to say it anyway. He had always been Bray's rival for her affections, and had been the one who had lost out in the end. Right now he didn't feel like the right one to help her; so he stayed back with the small, shaking boy and his waking nightmares of violence and death. Chloe and KC toyed with some of the food, eating some and leaving more, and gradually, with no more fuel to support it, the fire died away. Only when it was gone, and the nursery was completely dark, did Michaels at last relax and cease his shivering; and on the other side of the ashes, Amber began to cry.

Chapter Text

Lex found that he was happy with the Badlanders, although he wasn't sure that he would ever feel at home with them. They were too precise; too exact; too much the good little head boys and girls - the Prefects and head librarians, and all the other kind of school children who were so very much the opposite to his own character. Lex had rarely attended school, let alone bothered to learn anything there. He was the sort least likely ever to be made Prefect; who had mocked the well dressed, well behaved, responsible children, in their neat uniforms, with their little metal Prefect badges. It was ironic really, that here he was being accepted as one of them. They seemed to need him though, and that was better than everything he had escaped from. The Badlanders didn't want to hide from danger in some secret living space. They wanted to fight back. To that end they contrived to introduce him to some half a dozen tribes of similar thinking, sneaking him through burnt out buildings and over low, dilapidated roofs. Tribes that apparently didn't trust the Badlanders alone, but were for some reason reassured by the involvement of one of the Mall Rats. They might have been reduced to no more than a half of their number; they might be hiding like the rats they were named after; but the other tribes didn't need to know that. In these uncertain times the Mall Rats were a name that everybody had heard of, and associated with heroic stands and a push to create order out of the world's new madness. The tribe who had reintroduced currency and trade, peace and co-operation. They were a life-belt to cling to and now, guided by the Badlanders, Lex was the embodiment of all of that. It played nicely to his ego, but more importantly it freed him from the self loathing and impotent rage that had led to his flight from the Mall, and his subsequent near death.

He made a basic speech in each gloomy headquarters - a half-ruined cellar for one tribe, an old bakery for a second, the cells beneath a fallen police station for a third. At each place he found the best place to stand, and spoke to a sullen scattering of too few, none of whom looked like the kind destined to win great wars. Even the ones registered with Tribe Fury were underfed, and shivered in the cold after dark. The Badlanders offered food to increase the hoped for good feeling - dried rice, dried lentils, dried beans - the sort of food inclined to bring Lex out in a cold sweat. The sort that Bray enjoyed, which was reason enough to turn Lex against it, especially just at the moment. Bray, who went out into the city when everybody else cowered inside; Bray, who couldn't even survive a grenade attack, and had got himself killed. Still; Lex didn't need him, and he was determined to convince himself of that. He could inspire troops; he could found a Resistance. The Badlanders would help him, even if the Mall Rats couldn't.

And so he gave his speeches, and promised great numbers rising up against Tribe Fury. He paced up and down in front of his less than adoring audiences, and relived the glorious old battles against the Chosen. One or two hecklers asked questions about the less than glorious scuffles with Tribe Circus and the Locos, but for the most part they listened. They even agreed to help, in the end, although he sometimes wondered how many of them could be trusted. They all promised to spread the word as far as they could, and some even brought forth weapons to add to a general armoury. By the fourth day, when Lex and his Badlander companions set out to find new ears for their plans and speeches, they found that news of their ideas was already beginning to spread, even if largely amongst the Independents. For the most part it was only these already partly aligned tribes that they could speak to anyway, at least during daylight, for everybody who had registered with Tribe Fury was away working or training then, or being schooled. Only at night were there those other than the Independents, when the Badlanders worked hard to find a safe path through patrolling night guards to spread the word to the partially tamed. It was exciting, thought Lex, rather guilty. Exciting to be ferried back and forth like some prince, with guards ahead and behind, being taken to meet hushed groups of people waiting to hear him speak of the planned fight against Tribe Fury. Certainly the groups were numerically small, and there were few enough such meetings anyway - but it was better than nothing. On that fourth day, though, they found that something had changed.

"This is the headquarters of one of the newer tribes." Ever the stiff, correct type, Craig made it sound as much like an official report as always. "I don't know much about them I'm afraid, but I've heard some good things. I think they can be trusted."

"You think?" Lex smiled at him. "It's alright, None of us can really be sure about anyone anymore."

"Exactly." Craig straightened his tie, an habitual move, especially when he was about to meet somebody new. "They call themselves Seagulls. I don't know why - they don't seem to go anywhere near the sea, at least nowadays. Anyway, there were twelve of them before Tribe Fury came. Now they're down to five. I don't know how the others died."

"I don't suppose it matters now." Lex ducked down through the rusting cellar door that Craig indicated to him. Inside was a collection of decidedly unsafe looking stairs, leading to a damp-scarred room. There were five people standing in waiting there, all with their backs to the far wall, and all looking less than welcoming. Lex flashed them all a fine display of his favourite grin, and stepped aside for his four man Badlander guard to enter after him.

"I'm Lex," he said in greeting. "From the Mall Rats. These are the Badlanders. We're here as representatives of a united group of tribes intending to--"

"We know who you are." One of the Seagulls took a very unwilling step forward. "And we don't want anything to do with any rebel movement."

"What's all this about?" Craig advanced further into the room. "We were told to come here. We were told that you were amenable to--"

"We were... But that was before the news was posted." A second Seagull stepped forward, arms folded. "Four days ago the rebels tried to fight Tribe Fury and a number of Furies were killed. There are going to be reprisals. It's just been announced. One hundred of us. One hundred of us are going to be killed - executed, and at random - in retaliation. The rebels did that. Ebony and her Locos. You want to risk that happening again? You think anybody is going to join you when there's that kind of price to pay?"

"Reprisals." The words of Silver's speech came back to Lex now. "Yes of course. They promised reprisals. The food will be held back too. There'll be a lot of hunger. We could use that. The ill feeling against Tribe Fury--"

"Ill feeling against Tribe Fury? The only ill feeling is against the rebels. Against Ebony and her people." The first Seagull looked sour. "Not that they haven't paid for it. All dead."

"You know for sure that Ebony's dead?" Lex's reaction was rather more powerful than he might have thought it would be. The Seagulls showed no response to his emotion though. Instead the third shook his head.

"Not yet, no. Her followers are, and soon she'll be joining them. Here." He held out a crumpled piece of paper, roughly of A4 size, and obviously a poster. Lex snatched it away.

It was well designed, like everything that had to do with Tribe Fury. Handmade too, Lex couldn't help noticing. Presumably some person, or group of people, had worked hard to produce many of the things, all identical. It was enough to make anybody who looked at the poster yearn, in sympathy, for the days of electrical photocopying machines. Until recently illiterate, it wasn't easy for him to make out all of the words, but he wasn't going to let the Badlanders see that he was having problems, so he skimmed though it as best he could. By order of the Lord Brigadier-General Silver, it read, in a practical, but not unattractive, font. The two dangerous rebels, known to the city as Ebony and Bray, are to be executed three days from today in full view of the assembled populace, or their chosen representatives. Their deaths shall be a suitable lesson to all. A small picture of the two condemned, in simple black and white lines, finished the poster. Lex screwed the paper up in a tense and angry fist.

"Executed," he muttered thickly. "Three days from... When did you get this?"

"Today." The first Seagull took the poster back, smoothing out the creases where Lex had crushed it in his hand. "Along with the news about the hundred executions. This changes everything, Lex. Nobody wants to risk more innocent deaths, or risk winding up like these two. Try listening to the city grapevine for a change, instead of parading about the place making speeches about solidarity. Word is it'll be an execution that no one will ever forget."

"It will, huh. Poor Bray." Lex looked back to the poster, suddenly feeling rather sorry for his recent compatriots. He too had been a prisoner at the hotel once, and it had not been a pleasant experience. He could imagine it now, with the boots of marching guards echoing down the corridor outside the cells, and the cold seeping up through the floor. Always dingy, always uncomfortable.

"Bray?" Craig snatched the poster away, glowering at the Seagull boy who tried to retain it. "A 'suitable lesson to all'. I wonder what that means."

"Doesn't matter, does it. We can't let it happen." Though colourless, the drawing of the two captured rebels was faithful, and Lex almost felt as though he were staring into the real eyes of the pair as he looked upon their likenesses now.

"Can't we?" Craig glowered at the poster. "This is a distraction - and for all we know it's a trap as well. They probably think that there's other rebels out here - allies of these two maybe - who'll come wriggling out of the woodwork to save their friends. Where will we be then?"

"Nowhere." Lex took the picture back, and handed it to the Seagull it had been taken from. "But if we free them, think what it'll do to our reputation. Tribe Fury won't look so all powerful if they can't keep their two 'dangerous rebels' in custody, will they. We'll be able to prove to the other tribes that we can hold our own, and we'll get two more decent fighters into the bargain. The only thing it won't do is stop these other executions."

"They're rounding up the people tonight." One of the other Seagulls, so far silent, spoke up now. "They'll be dead by morning. You couldn't stop that with every tribe in the city on your side. All you'll do is get more people killed in reprisals, if you try to rescue them or these other two." In his head dress of white feathers, with his heavily serious expression, he might have cut a dashing figure, had he not been an ungainly thirteen, and with the precocious air of the prematurely old. Lex found him rather disconcerting.

"We won't be getting anybody killed." Irritated by these words, Krishnan, Craig's second-in-command, turned his impressive glare upon the masses assembled. "Well it's none of us doing the killing, is it. The only people to blame for these reprisals are Tribe Fury. Not us."

"I wonder if we can convince the city of that." Craig looked back to Lex. "There's certainly no sense in making matters worse just to try to rescue your friends. You've got to see that that would be crazy. Why risk getting ourselves killed, and ending all of this before it's begun, just to rescue a mad woman who'd kill us all given the chance, and a do-gooder who's always causing trouble? It's not worth it."

"You know them then?" Lex wasn't surprised. At some point since the collapse of the old world Ebony seemed to have fought everybody, and Bray seemed to have annoyed everybody. Tribes Lex had never heard of, hidden in parts of the city he had never seen - all apparently had grudges against the queen of the Locos and, or, the Mall Rats' sometime leader. It was quite a record.

"We've met. I knew Bray once." Craig looked disparaging. "But that's irrelevant. This isn't about old times, it's about now. We can't afford to risk anything in rescuing two people who got themselves into trouble. They've made their bed, Lex."

"Hard luck." He was decided now, just as he had been decided before - facing the massed ranks of the Chosen to rescue Bray on the beach months ago, and shortly after doing so again, to rescue him from the threat of being burnt alive. Sometimes you had to take risks. It was worth it.

"They'll be holding them at the hotel." He nodded once, hard, running through the layout of the place in his mind. He had an advantage there, for he knew the building well. Not just the main rooms above ground - the offices and living quarters of the occupiers, and the garden and leisure area outside - but the underground rooms as well. The storerooms and cellar turned into cells, and the secret entrance way that Ebony had fashioned herself, soon after taking the place over following Zoot's death.

"Lex..." Craig was beginning to simmer, but Lex didn't care.

"I can get us into the hotel, no problem. It would help if I knew the pattern of the guards, but it probably won't matter. We can work something out." He was almost smiling, glad for the chance to play soldiers. "There won't be many guards underground. If we can take them out quietly we can have Bray and Ebony out of there - and maybe other people from the cells too - and be gone in no time. Shouldn't even be any real scuffles."

"Lex..."

"No, I mean it. I'm with you about building a resistance, but what's a resistance for if it's not resisting? This could be our first proper operation."

"And I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm serious. We can't risk manpower trying to save these two. They got themselves into trouble and they can get themselves out of it."

"Craig, that's rather unfair." Krishnan seemed surprised, but Craig merely shot him an angry glare.

"You don't under--"

"You really don't like them, do you." Lex eyed the Badlander leader with suspicion. "What happened? He steal your girl?"

"You think I want to leave them to die just because we had some kind of a disagreement? Come on, I'm not that hardhearted. I just don't want to risk a very limited organisation to save two people."

"Two people who could be very useful. And besides, even if they were complete nobodies, surely this is just what we're supposed to be doing?" Krishnan was frowning, apparently being to suspect Craig's motives as much as did Lex. "We can't leave two people to be executed, especially if it's going to be in some especially gruesome fashion, when there's something we can do about it. We're supposed to standing up to Tribe Fury."

"Which is exactly what Ebony and Bray were doing - which is actually why they're sitting in a cell waiting to be killed as painfully as the Furies can manage. Krish, I'm only thinking of you guys. All of you. We'll be risking a lot."

"Well I think it's worth it. And I'm going." Lex nodded once, as firmly as he could. "They're my friends, and I'm not going to leave them to die. Bray would do this for me. Besides, it'll make the third time I've rescued him from an imminent execution. I think that qualifies me for some kind of silver cup." He looked around at the others, even at the Seagulls who had so far showed no intention of assisting him. "Who's with me?"

"Me." Krishnan ignored Craig's sour look. "I agree with you, Lex. This is worth it, and it's something that we should be doing. If the city really does start turning against any attempts at resistance because of these reprisals, we have to do something to get the initiative back. Leave Tribe Fury with egg on their faces, and we'll be looking good."

"And we'll have Tribe Fury looking to get their own back." Craig shook his head. "This is crazy."

"Maybe." The first Seagull was looking thoughtful. "We've lost a lot of people to Tribe Fury, because we tried to stay independent and they found us. We can't risk anybody else, so there's no way we're throwing in with you over this. But if you manage to pull it off - if you can prove that you can break into the hotel and get out with a couple of their prisoners - then we'll join you in the resistance, and help to spread the word. We used to have some clout with the other tribes around here, and even if all that has gone now, I think there's still people who'll listen to us, at least amongst the shore tribes. Get those two out without triggering off another wave of reprisals, and you've got another section of the city on your side." He held out his hand, surrounded as it was in a bracelet of white feathers and seashells. "Deal?"

"Hey, you got it." Lex shook the hand hard, eyeing the boy up and down as he did so. Scrawny type, he decided, but the kind who looked like he might well know how to handle himself. Most people did these days, after all. He was probably about fifteen, and less cowed than a lot of the city-dwellers nowadays. "How many people do you think you can get onboard?"

"Maybe twenty. Thirty. Depending on how many are still alive. They won't have anything more than sticks and stones to fight with, but I think they'll stand up and do the fighting anyway. With the right leader."

"Good." At this turn of events Lex couldn't help but feel jaunty - and Craig be damned. Maybe war wasn't such a hard business after all.

Chapter Text

Jack awoke with a jump, as a heavy weight hit him in the chest. He opened a bleary eye.

"Hnugh?" It wasn't remotely legible, and wasn't intended to be. Above him Pride swam into focus.

"Wake up." The older boy looked angry, which was about par for the course. Pride was always angry. He wished he had run from the Mall in a rage alongside Lex, no matter where it had taken the other boy, and Jack knew it. Lex was free, wherever he was and whatever had happened to him. Free of hiding in the Mall alongside the other Rats - and rats - and free of Racha and his mind games. The infernal weekly meetings, the mocking grins, the gentle encouragements to throw everybody's lives away in order to fight Tribe Fury, and give Racha himself a bit of sick entertainment into the bargain. Lex was free of all of that, and Pride most certainly wasn't; none of which had done anything to improve his mood. Pride hated Racha. The twisted brigadier was only troubling the tribe because of Bray - and Bray was already far from being Pride's favourite person. Bray had got Amber exiled from the city; Bray had got Amber pregnant in the first place, putting her life in danger; Bray had won Amber away from Pride, and broken Pride's heart in the process. Pride had thought that he was long past all of that, but recently his old bitterness had risen to the surface. With Lex gone, things were only getting worse. Jack only understood half of it, but he knew the flat glow in Pride's eyes, and he knew that the Gaian was still thinking of Amber.

"I am awake," he muttered, and tried to sit up. Three large cans of soup rolled off his chest and onto his bed, and he blinked at them stupidly. "Soup?"

"From Racha. More treats for his pets." Pride sat down heavily next to Jack. "I've been out."

"I guessed. A little early in the day for a meeting isn't it?"

"Yes. His idea. He was standing outside the Mall at first light, so I thought I'd better go out and see what he wanted. He wasn't kidding about knowing everything, obviously. I don't think he saw where I got in and out though." His shoulders seemed to slump. "Not that it probably matters."

"He give you any more pearls of wisdom?"

"No. No, he just seemed to be angling for something. Trying to find out if we know anything about the Locos and their rebellion a few days back I think." The older boy seemed to be thinking hard, or wrestling perhaps with something deep inside him. "Jack... What do you think of Bray?"

"He's our leader." Actually Jack had never really believed that; as far as he could see, Amber was the leader. Bray had always been happier when he only had to worry about collecting stores. All the same, Jack was loyal to the often mysterious loner. Bray might be weird and moody, and self-righteous too at times - and admittedly he had put them all in danger in the past with his illicit liaisons with the Locos - but he was still basically a good guy. He came through in the end. Jack looked up to him, the way he had once looked up to the older, more popular boys in school. "He's a good guy, Pride. Why?"

"Because. Because... I don't know." Pride reached into his shirt and pulled out a folded up piece of paper, which he stared at for some time. "If you were captured, Jack, we'd have to get you back whatever the cost. You're probably the one person left here that we can't do without. You're the one who's keeping us supplied with water, and who's fixing it so we'll have electricity again soon. You're vital, Jack."

"Well... thanks." Jack grinned, hesitantly at first, but appreciatively. Pride nodded.

"But I'm not vital. All I do is keep the rendezvous with Racha that was supposed to be Bray's responsibility. Tai-San, Luke, Trudy - they all have their uses, but none of them is indispensable."

"If they were captured we'd try to free them. We'd have to."

"How, Jack? You're no fighter. Neither's Trudy. Besides, she always has Brady to worry about. How could the rest of us hope to rescue anybody - how could we justify saving anybody - who wasn't absolutely vital?"

"I suppose it's all down to perspective." Jack frowned, his own eyes now drawn to the piece of folded paper in Pride's hands. "What's all this about, anyway?"

"Trying to persuade myself that it isn't stupid old grudges making me want to keep my head down." Pride handed over the paper, and watched as Jack opened it up. He knew what it said - had looked at it a hundred times in the short while since finding it blowing in the street outside. Jack's lips moved once or twice as he read the ominous words: '...dangerous rebels...'; '...executed three days from today...'; '...a suitable lesson to all...'. Finally he laid the paper down on his lap, and looked up.

"Bray's alive," he said, with no small measure of wonder. They had heard rumours of Ebony's involvement with the rebellion, but it had been nothing that Racha would substantiate. He seemed to like keeping them in the dark. Bray's fate had been unknown since Lex and Pride had looked their last upon him whilst escaping from Tribe Fury some weeks back. And now here, at last, was proof that he had survived that incident. Happiness and distress flowed through Jack in an awkward tangle of conflict. "Alive for now, anyway."

"You see what I was getting at?"

"But we can't just leave him!" The words exploded out of Jack, and he leapt to his feet in a rush. "Pride, we--"

"Ssh." Pride stood up as well, grabbing the smaller boy's arms and pushing him back down onto the bed. "Jack, I came to you because I needed to talk to someone, and you're the only one left that I can talk to. I could hardly go to Trudy with this. You have to see that there's nothing we can do."

"I don't... I'm not..." Jack's gentle face crinkled into a frown. He wasn't a strategist. He was the one who designed things, and built them when he could. He was a scientist. The others around him thought up plans, fought battles, did the rescuing and the needing to be rescued. All he knew was what seemed right to him. "We can't leave them to die," he said at last, and stood up again. This time Pride didn't make him sit down.

"Do you have any idea how to do this?" he asked. Jack scowled.

"Not the slightest," he admitted. He was thinking vague thoughts of the hotel, which he had visited often enough during Ebony's reign. He knew the basic layout of the place, or thought that he did. How hard could it be to break in and get somebody out? Theoretically all that was necessary was to avoid being seen by any of the guards. Jack was good with theories. Folding the poster back up into neat quarters, he headed off out of his workshop. Pride stared after him. He wasn't the cold type; it wasn't really in his nature to leave anyone to suffer or to die; but he was a realist, and he was far better placed than Jack to see the dangers that they might face in mounting a rescue attempt. Perhaps it would have been better if he had kept the poster to himself - but that was not a possibility. Such secrets as that didn't stay kept. He stayed where he was for a moment, listening to Jack summoning the others; watching from the doorway as they came one by one. Trudy, half-dressed and carrying Brady; Tai-San, looking like she had been another night without sleep, lost in worry for Lex; Luke, coming from the canteen, where he had been busy making breakfast for everybody. Luke was almost indispensable now, Pride had to admit. He seemed to be the only one of them left with any real energy or enthusiasm. The only one of them who could make anything inviting from their meagre stores; the reason why Jack was able to get his workshop running again. Luke encouraged him to think laterally, largely through seemingly ingenuous questions; encouraging him to cannibalise all kinds of unexpected materials around the Mall to build his various projects. He was smiling now as he came down the stairs - the way that he had been smiling ever since convincing himself that the Guardian had died alongside Bray. Well that was one conviction that might be about to take a drubbing, thought Pride. He didn't smile at the thought though. That would be unfair.

"What is it, Jack?" Trudy set her baby down on the floor with a small soft toy, then sat down on the edge of the fountain. Jack shook out the poster, holding it up.

"Bray's alive!" He announced it as though it were a great piece of news - which of course it would have been, without the coda that followed. Trudy gasped at him, speechless with delight, and even the now commonly morose Tai-San managed a smile.

"Alive?" Luke wiped his hands on the apron he had dug out of a dusty cupboard in the canteen. Cobwebs still trailed from the bottom hem, but these days hygiene was one of the least of their problems. "How do you know?"

"Pride found this." Jack handed the poster to him, beginning to look a little sheepish. "It's not exactly great news."

"I'll say. A prisoner of Tribe Fury?" Luke looked up, catching Pride's eye, and seeing the reservations that the older boy couldn't hide. "Jack, this is--"

"Yeah, I know." Jack couldn't help being prickly towards Luke in just the way that Pride couldn't help feeling likewise towards Bray. Luke had turned Ellie's head - Luke had been one of the reasons Ellie had left the city. Still; at least it meant that she was safe now, and far away from all of this, at least until Tribe Fury began to expand beyond the city limits. Luke met his gaze, beginning to frown then changing his mind. After all, he missed Ellie too.

"Here." He handed the poster on to Trudy, well aware that there was no easy way to break that kind of news. "So what's the plan?"

"Rescue him of course!" Trudy's voice went up to a squeak of shock and outrage, and she jumped in a rush to her feet. "He's alive. We can't let them kill him. Or Ebony." She stared at the two hand-drawn faces, much as Lex had done. "Alive. I thought--"

"So did we all." Pride strode over, avoiding Jack's bright eyes. "Listen, we have to talk this through carefully. Breaking in there - assuming that they are at the hotel, since we have no way of knowing - could well be impossible; let alone getting out again. There are only five of us, after all, and Trudy can't go." He held up a hand to forestall her objections. "Trudy, I know how you feel about Bray. We all do. But somebody has to stay with Brady, and that means you." He sat down on the fountain wall, where she had been a moment before. "This is insane. We shouldn't even be talking about this."

"But we are." Tai-San was holding the poster now. "If it was Lex, I would go to rescue him even if it meant going alone. We should do the same for Bray. He's done so much for all of us. He's a big part of this tribe, and we can't afford to lose any more friends." She spoke quietly and firmly, in a way that did not allow for arguments. "Do you have any idea when this poster was released?"

"Must have been yesterday. Tribe Fury don't do things like that at night, and I found it first thing this morning." Pride raised an eyebrow. "Which means we have two days before the execution."

"We could try a raid on the execution place," suggested Jack. Pride smiled at him, appreciating the humour in that suggestion despite his less than cheerful mood.

"And you know where that is? Jack, people who dash in at the last second to snatch people from the gallows tend to have fight choreographers to back them up. That kind of thing can't be done by four unarmed kids who don't know what the hell they're doing."

"So it's a secret job then." Luke ran his hands through his blue hair. "I learnt a fair bit about that with the Chosen. Sneaking here, sneaking there. It's something we were all good at."

"Fine." Pride was thinking of other things, still convinced that this was a stupid thing to do. Some risks, perhaps, were just too big to take. "Then we'll go tonight. Is that breakfast ready yet?"

"Yes." Luke brightened at the mention of food, the contribution he liked to make to life in the Mall.

"Good." Pride pushed himself to his feet. "Then let's eat. We have a lot to talk about. A lot to get ready. We can spend the rest of the day going through our moves."

"Our moves." Jack might have smiled at the words. Surely nobody was less of a military man than he? Less likely a candidate for practising moves and manoeuvres for an operation like this? But it had to be done, and there was no avoiding that. Even if it meant that, come tomorrow morning, Trudy was the only one of them left.

Chapter Text

It might have been better to have been killed outright. At least then it would all have been over. When they had walked back together to face the oncoming hordes of Tribe Fury, Ebony and Bray had expected to die. There had seemed no way out, and even if it was not what either of them had wanted, they had been ready for it. When there seemed to be no alternative, there was little point in hiding from the inevitable - but inevitability had proved to be elusive.

The soldiers of Tribe Fury had come at them en masse - fifteen or twenty of them, pouring down the thin street, keeping formation in a precise, fast moving square. They were like a squad of riot policemen, carrying shields and banging on them in a powerful rhythm, trying to put fear into the hearts of anybody ranged against them. Ebony had cracked a feeble joke that Bray had hardly heard, and had squeezed his hand in what they both believed to be a final gesture. Before they had had a chance to martial their thoughts, however; before they could make any attempt at their last - and, they hoped, brave - futile stand, more of the enemy had flooded out at them from many directions. They had been swamped in seconds, borne down under the inexorable tide of yelling, cheering Furies.. Bray remembered being pinned down, flat on his back on cold, hard, damp tarmac; fighting uselessly against an impossible weight of numbers; turning his head in a vain attempt to see Ebony. There had been a wild confusion of noise and a steady battering from clumsy feet and hands - then he was hauled to his feet and dragged away. His feet had barely touched the ground.

And now they waited, both of them, in a gloomy, dirty prison that had once been part of the cellar at the hotel. Bray had been locked in such a room before, when Ebony had taken him as payment for her assistance in saving the Mall Rats from Tribe Circus. Now she was a prisoner alongside him, in a room recently reinforced and deeply disheartening. There was no furniture, no window - nothing but a pair of grey blankets and a poster declaiming the glory of Tribe Fury. It was replaced as often as they tore it down, but tear it down they still did, from time to time. Silver's handsome, proud face became unbearable after a while, beaming his message of presumed supremacy through his painted eyes and smile.

They had learned almost immediately why they had been captured alive, when all or most of their companions had been killed. Tribe Fury planned to make an example of them with a public execution. Something grim, or so they were told. Something so unpleasant, and so demonstrative, that nobody who witnessed it would ever think of rebelling again - and many people would witness it. Attendance was to be compulsory for everybody in the immediate neighbourhood, and all the sectors in the city would be required to send representatives. Fame at last, Ebony had joked. She had once wanted to be on the stage - and now at last she would be. Nobody had told them when it was all to happen though; not at first - they had just had to wait it out in their dark cell, nursing their respective injuries and trying to keep warm. They marked time by the patrols of the guards in the corridor outside, though they had to estimate as to their regularity. Beyond that there was nothing to do save plot impossible escapes and plan unobtainable futures. All in all, it was hard to imagine how things could possibly be worse.

Restless and despondent, Bray shifted stiffly, acutely aware of the pain in his arm. Needless to say Tribe Fury had offered their captives no medicine, nor even the chance to see a medic, and they had been left to their own devices. They had enough drinking water to warrant using some to try cleaning their various injuries, and Bray had fashioned a bandage of sorts for Ebony's more serious leg wound. It didn't seem to want to heal. As far as they could tell, judging by guard patrols and food and water deliveries, they had been locked up for around five days now; so in theory they should both have been recovering. The blood was flowing less often; there was less sign of swelling perhaps. The pain didn't seem to diminish though, and they were both still bothered by it. Moving helped, but there was a limit to how often anybody could limp in circles around a small, square cell. Usually they wound up sprawled on the floor again, either arguing or trying to make each other laugh; or perhaps sharing stories of happier times. Things changed after the first few days though, when they were finally told when they were going to die. They were left then just with wondering how it was going to happen; not that the now had meant a great deal in this place of uncertain time. Life became merely a long wait - a wondering of how exctly they were going to die; a nervous stretch of the imagination over phrases like 'unimaginable pain' and 'something that the city will never forget'. A constant wondering about how much time had passed and how much was still to go; stuck thinking that maybe it would be better if it was all over, just so that there would be no more wondering.

And right now it was quiet, which added to the torture and the discomfort. Not that it was ever very noisy. Ebony was asleep, curled up on one of the blankets, her wounded leg stretched out awkwardly. The hard, dusty floor wasn't much of a bed, but it was as good as anything else when exhaustion took a hold. She moved only occasionally, dreaming only quietly, and he smiled fondly at her as he tried to stretch some life back into his own, rather less relaxed body. His wounded arm screamed its protests, and he muttered irritably at it. It seemed a shame that the painful limb probably wouldn't get a chance to heal now.

The sound of voices roused him from his sleepy ponderings, and he moved as quietly as he could to the door, lying face down just in front of it. The gap beneath the door was big enough to allow him to see something of what was happening outside in the corridor, and he watched with some interest. New prisoners, apparently; not that he could see much above their ankles. They were being herded, though, so 'prisoners' seemed a fair assumption; and as he watched they were pushed into a cell opposite his own. The door thumped shut and the guards marched away. Bray watched them go, for as far as his little viewing range would allow.

"Being nosy?" Ebony sat up slowly, rubbing her injured arm, and trying to look as if it didn't hurt as much as it did. "You're going to have the guards angry at you again."

"Well what are they going to do? Execute me?" He gave up on the crack beneath the door and sat up. "New prisoners. I wonder who they are?"

"Ancient royalty, returned to the city to begin the process of winning back their realm." Ebony shrugged. "Fools who got on the wrong side of the wrong people when they were out looking for food, I suppose. What did you see?"

"Two people. Male and female I think."

"You think? Bray, honey, if you need a few lessons in--" She broke off, not wanting to provoke an argument. Small cells were not places in which to have fights. Bray glared at her.

"I couldn't see above their ankles. You try telling what sex they are. One of them was wearing baseball boots, worn pretty thin. Very big feet, so I'm thinking it was a guy, but you never know. The other was wearing red canvas sandals and red and white stripy stockings. That says 'female' as a general rule."

"Or Tribe Vaudeville."

"Yes, or Tribe--" He broke off, frowning. "Are they still around?"

"No. We wiped out the survivors when Zoot was still with us. I think he sold their leaders to one of the shore tribes to work on the fishing fleet." She shrugged. "So, not Tribe Vaudeville then."

"I guess not. It's somebody though."

"Whoever it is will be dead or working on a slave gang by the end of the week - and since we're going to be dead ourselves by then, there's probably not much sense in wondering about it." She shifted awkwardly, trying to ease the pain in her leg. "I wonder if the others have heard about us yet. Back at the Mall, I mean."

"I hope not. Tribe Fury will be spreading the word, I guess, if we're going to be that much of an example - but with a bit of luck the Mall Rats will be keeping their heads down. I don't want them to know. Anyway, when did you get to be such a defeatist? Who says we'll be dead by the end of the week? Always supposing that it's not the end of the week already."

"Old phrases like that don't have much meaning any more, do they. Though I'm betting Tribe Fury always know what day of the week it is." She fixed him with a particularly straight and honest gaze. "And who says I'm being a defeatist? I'm just looking at this sensibly. Are you up to fighting your way out of here?"

"No." He looked at the ground, feeling his injured arm throbbing in sympathetic rhythm with his pulse. He had been stabbed fairly deeply in one shoulder, and the arm had by now become almost useless. Given a chance to heal properly, he had no doubt that it would be as good as new again in a week or two. He was optimistic that way. For the time being, though, it hampered his movements considerably. One of his legs was hurt too, and although the wound was not nearly so bad as that affecting Ebony's leg, still it would prevent him from doing any serious running. He had run on it at first, before he had been captured, but the days since, given the chill of the cell and the hard floor that he had to sleep upon, had left it stiff and uncooperative. He doubted that he would get very far in a chase without it giving way underneath him. Ebony wouldn't even fare that well. Feeling thoroughly miserable he lay back down again, and peered once more through the crack beneath the door. Beyond, the corridor was still and dim, and faint sounds drifted down from the world outside. A voice, a footstep, the scrape of a rifle as it knocked against something. He listened with half an ear, thinking morbid thoughts, and didn't for some moments notice the pair of eyes staring back at him from across the corridor. One of the new prisoners, whoever he or she was, was peering at him through the crack under the door opposite. The whoever it was looked suspicious and wary, though noticeably devoid of fear. Bray offered a slightly awkward smile, but it wasn't returned.

"What did you do?" he asked, in an attempt to make conversation. It might be nice to have somebody to talk to other than Ebony, even if the attempt did bring the massed legions of the Fury Guard stampeding down upon him. The eyes watching him blinked, frowned, then softened slightly.

"Don't really know," came the faintly gruff reply. "We've been out of the city a long time. We were coming back, and suddenly there were people in uniforms all over the place. We had a bit of a fight I suppose. Too many of them though." The eyes blinked at Bray, oddly soft and placid, despite the gruffness of the voice. "How about you?" There was no answer, for Bray was staring at him in amazement. "I said, how about you?" Bray still didn't answer him. The familiarity of the voice, becoming more apparent with every word; the sudden pressure on his arm as Ebony came to join him by the door - all made his spirits soar for one brief moment; before grim reality made him remember that even familiar voices meant nothing when the odds were stacked so very heavily in favour of the enemy. He dragged up a smile.

"Ryan?"

"Huh?" The eyes narrowed slightly, returning to their previous expression of distrust. "How do you know my name?"

"Because I lived in the Mall with you for who knows how long." Bray's smile grew at the thought of that old sanctuary. "There's somebody with you. Is it Salene?"

"Bray?" Ryan, for it was most certainly he, pressed himself closer to the door, as though the extra millimetre's proximity might give him a better look. "Is that really you? What are you doing here?"

"Bray?" The female voice was unmistakably Salene's, her always easily read emotions typically close to the surface now. "Bray?" A second pair of eyes, fringed by a lock of hair as startlingly red as was Jack's, jostled for a place next to Ryan. "It doesn't-- Well I can't see much, but it certainly doesn't look like you."

"It doesn't?" It took him a moment to wonder at that, until he realised that he must look pretty terrible. It wasn't so much the days of imprisonment, although that certainly hadn't helped. Wasting precious drinking water on cleaning wounds, in the hope of avoiding infection, was one thing; wasting it for simple cleanliness was quite another. His face still bore the marks of battle; namely smudges of soot that had smeared with the blood and the war paint, and mixed with the trails of hair dye that had began to run in the heat of the fight. It hadn't been a good dye, like the one used by Salene, nor good war paint, like the kind used by Ebony; just basic stuff, applied in a hurry before they had marched out of their camp for the last time. He wondered how he looked now; something like he had the time they had all had a paint fight at the Mall, perhaps. That or like a Loco. He grinned uncertainly, and put his hand up to touch the now re-dried riot of colour. "Sorry. I must look a sight."

"You always do." Ebony hadn't been able to resist that one, but Bray didn't bother shooting her his usual glare. Instead he merely focused on his two old friends, delivered to him so unexpectedly, though unlikely to be of any real help.

"We were captured," he said in the end, in answer to Ryan's previous question. "Things have changed so much in the city since you both went away. Salene will have told you all about seeing off the Chosen, I guess? After that, Tribe Fury came. They were so well organised."

"They look it," growled Ryan. "Real military operation. All the proper equipment, too."

"Exactly. We didn't stand a chance. They took the city faster than anybody else could have done. Made all the tribes sign up to a big registration scheme. Work in exchange for food, and woe betide anybody who tries to hold out. Ebony and I were trying to fight back, but... well, we didn't get very far."

"Bad luck." Ryan sounded sympathetic, as he so very often was. A gentler sort it would be harder to find, despite his strength and fighting ability. "What about the others?"

"Still back at the Mall I guess. We got separated a few weeks back."

"But they are still alive?" Salene sounded frightened. "I mean, we saw some pretty scary things. There seemed to be a lot of... blood... on the walls. It was blood, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Ebony shuffled closer, so that she could more properly be a part of the conversation. "There's been a lot of blood lately. A lot more still to come, if things don't change."

"This city seems to lurch from one crisis to another." Salene stared at back them, her face, or what was visible of it, looking pale and sad. "I wonder if the other cities, in all the other countries, are the same?"

"What was it like where you've been these past weeks?" Bray spoke gently to her, knowing her well, and knowing how best to treat her. It was Ryan who answered.

"Gentle," he said, and sounded wistful. Probably he wished he were there now. "Patsy and I were sent to a holding camp. We were weaving robes, of all things. For the Chosen and their initiates I suppose. It was boring, but we were treated well enough. Then one day word came that the Chosen had fallen, and the guards just went away. We didn't know the way back to the city. We were taken away in the back of a covered wagon, and it was a long journey. We didn't even know what direction to start walking in. We passed through settlements. Camps full of peaceful, simple people." He gave a little laugh, as though he were embarrassed to have been speaking in such a way. "It was nice, I guess. No fighting, or scavenging for old tins and packets of dried food. No sheltering in burnt buildings, and living in the debris of the old world. Made me wonder if I shouldn't have stayed out of the city, and never come back with Lex when we left the military camp."

"You've changed." Bray hoped that it didn't sound accusing, but that it seemed to be the compliment it was meant to be. "The Chosen?"

"Maybe." Ryan sounded a little confused, which was familiar coming from him. Some things hadn't changed, clearly. He did sound more sure of himself, though. More mature perhaps. The time away from Lex had been good for him. "You've changed too. You must have. You've been wearing paint. Lots of it. Like the warrior tribes."

"We are a warrior tribe." Ebony's flash of pride seemed to surprise even her, and she smiled a little sheepishly. "Well, we were a warrior tribe. Before the Furies killed everybody else. None of which helps us right now. What are they going to do with you?"

"Do with us?" Ryan shifted uncomfortably, no doubt thinking protective thoughts about Salene. "I don't know. They didn't say. What do they usually do?"

"Remember the blood on the walls?" Ebony's tone was less than pleasant, but Bray's attempt to nudge her in rebuke came to an abrupt end when he tried to do it with his injured arm. He sucked in a sharp breath and had to glare at her instead.

"You might get put on one of the work crews, since you're new to the city." He knew that he didn't sound convinced; largely because he wasn't. "They do have a tendency just to execute people though. If you made an appeal maybe..."

"You're scaring me, Bray." Salene sat up abruptly, vanishing from the crack beneath the door. Her skin felt cold, but she didn't think that it was just because she had been lying on a cold floor. All this time she had been looking forward to returning to the city. She had ridden out on horseback, anxious for the day when she would find Ryan and bring him home. Everybody would be delighted to see them when they came back. The city would be peaceful with the Chosen gone. She could resume her life amongst her friends. Instead she had found the city in the hands of yet another insane tribe, with blood all over the place; unfriendly people with guns; Bray lying in a cell and apparently waiting to be executed. Ryan also sat up, going instinctively to comfort her.

"It's alright," he told her, although he felt a fool for saying it. He had no idea whether things would be alright. She smiled somewhat shakily.

"This isn't exactly the homecoming I'd hoped for."

"Me either. We should have gone with Patsy." He took her hand. "I won't let anybody shoot you. Promise. You'll see. We've all had some narrow escapes in the past, right? But we're all still alive."

"Dal isn't." She smiled more strongly, however, and nodded her head. "You're right. I'm sure we'll be okay."

"That's the spirit." Hearing things only faintly, Bray tried to offer his own support. He rolled over onto his back, staring up at the dark, damp ceiling. Cobwebs tracked back and forth, but he couldn't see any spiders. They had probably long escaped. "I'm sorry you got caught up in this. Both of you. You should have been safe outside the city. Some of the others are. Ellie, Alice, the twins. Amber, I think. I hope." He smiled sadly, and Ebony put her hand on his shoulder in one of her periodic attempts to be nice. "What happened to Patsy?"

"She's out there somewhere." Ryan was thinking back to the last time he had seen the young girl, and it showed in his voice. "We got word at one of the settlements we passed through, of a place where a lot of the disabled kids went. They didn't have a great time of it in the cities, you know that, and a lot of tribes didn't want anything to do with them, but supposedly there's a place where a lot of them ended up. Living together in some kind of commune. Somebody said that there was a deaf boy there called Paul."

"Paul?" Bray frowned. "What are the chances of it being that Paul?"

"I don't know. How many deaf kids are there in the country who are called Paul? Anyway, she had to go and find out. If there's any chance of it being her brother, she couldn't very well forget about it, could she. We offered to go as well, but she told us to come back here. I hope she doesn't find him just to lead him back here into this."

"Word is spreading. It must be." Ebony was not good at reassurance, but she made a valiant attempt now. "Maybe in a while people will know not to try coming here. They might even get together and come in mob-handed to drive Tribe Fury out."

"Yeah, that's going to happen." Ryan glared at the door. "Do you really think we're stupid enough to believe that? Nobody cares enough to try. Nobody works together that way. Not even out there in the countryside, where they all get along so much better. Besides, the only people who'd try an attack like that are the kind of people who'd only do it so that they could take over afterwards. We'd swap your friends here for something else just as bad."

"And with the Guardian wandering around out there, I don't want to know what that might be." Bray closed his eyes, deciding that he had seen enough of derelict cobwebs. "We have to get out of here. The only way we're going to see off Tribe Fury is if we do it ourselves."

"Did I miss something? Isn't that how we came to be in here in the first place?" Ebony rubbed her injured arm, unable to avoid thinking about the moment when it had been hurt. "It turned out not to be very easy, remember?"

"We didn't exactly have a lot of people behind us. We need to regroup. Take our time. Not be afraid to wait a while."

"Like the two days we have left before they cut our heads off? Or flay us alive? We don't have time, Bray. We don't have support. We don't have anybody to regroup with. All we have is us. You and me. And maybe those two."

"And the Guardian." It was a pitiful list, made worse rather than better by that last addition, but Bray added him anyway. He was one more person who wanted to get rid of Tribe Fury, at any rate.

"Yeah. The Guardian. Who hates us both, and once tried to have you burnt to death in front of half his followers. He could teach Tribe Fury a thing or two about cruelty. If you're looking for support, he's not the best person to be looking at."

"Pardon me for trying to be optimistic, Ebony. It just seems so stupid, waiting here to be killed. Sitting here all this time I almost stopped thinking about how we might be able to escape, but it feels different now." He slid back down to peer once again through the crack beneath the door. "Ryan, that military camp you mentioned. The one where you and Lex were sent to train?"

"Yeah?" Ryan's eyes appeared again. "It was a nice place. I liked it. They taught us all about survival and fighting, just like the proper army. We were going to be the last guard."

"Against us," muttered Ebony, who rather appreciated the humour of that. It had been gangs like the Locos, spreading amongst the city's children, that had inspired the adults to set up the camps. If everything had gone according to plan, Ryan and Lex would have been part of a uniformed army not unlike Tribe Fury, marching into the city to restore order and try to beat back the Locos, the Demon Dogs and their contemporaries. But then, things rarely went according to plan in days of such chaos as those had been.

"Yeah. Maybe." Ryan's eyes darted from one to the other of them. "But what about it."

"You had weapons in those camps, right?" elaborated Bray. "You were trained in all that stuff I mean. Guns. Army drill."

"Yeah. We did marching and target practice and all that stuff. But I don't--"

"The weapons, Ryan. What happened to them?"

"They might still be in the camps up in the hills. Some of the other kids might have taken them, though, when we all disbanded. I always wondered why Lex didn't. But that's all outside of the city, anyway. What good is it to us?"

"I don't know. I just... Ryan, listen. If they were going to take back the city, and keep the peace in all that chaos, they'd have needed a lot of firepower, right? The petrol was running out, everybody was mostly travelling on foot... A gang of kids couldn't have marched down out of the hills carrying all that much weaponry, could they?"

"No. There were a few caches of weapons hidden about inside the city. The Virus starting spreading faster though, and there were so few adults left. They all ran away from the city with their families to try to stay alive, and then everything was nuts. By the time we got back to the city there was nobody left to tell us where the guns were. Lex and I looked for a while. Lex wanted to be a big man, and he thought he could do that with guns, but there wasn't a sign of them anywhere. We tried government buildings... public areas... schools. Nothing."

"I never knew about any of this." Ebony would have sat up sharply if she hadn't suspected that it would hurt too much. Bray flashed her one of his faintly superior glances.

"You were the kind of people who were never supposed to find out. If we could only find them now, though. With guns to back them up half the kids in the city would probably help us. Before we only had the guns we'd stolen from Tribe Fury, and it would take forever to arm ourselves properly that way. But if we could find just one of those arms stashes..."

"And you don't think somebody might already have found them?" Salene didn't like the talk of guns, although there seemed little point in mentioning such reservations. Ordinarily she would never have imagined that Bray would have been talking this way either. "It's not just Ryan and Lex who came out of one of those camps. And if you know about them too--"

"If anybody had found them we'd have known all about it." Bray darted a faintly accusing glance at Ebony, who offered him an innocent and charming smile.

"True enough," she said brightly. "If any tribe had found those weapons we'd have known about it soon enough. They'd have used them, and others would have seen them, and sooner or later the Locos or the Demon Dogs would have got hold of some of them. We had one or two handguns until we ran out of ammunition, but that was just stuff that Zoot took from the police station we got most of our equipment from."

"There were one or two rifles about the place, too, that were in private houses. That's all." Bray was thinking hard. Where would a governing body of terrified adults hide guns for the use of their child army? Plenty of people had wondered it of course - so it would have to be somewhere less than obvious. Somewhere where nobody would ever think of looking. But how could you think of somewhere you would never think of?

"I don't want a gun," muttered Salene. Bray smiled, his mind still on other things.

"Me neither. But if it's what we need to do, we'll have to do it. There'll be plenty of kids who'll be willing to take our guns if we don't want them."

"I'd have one." Ryan seemed quite happy at the prospect, for one who was essentially so gentle at heart. "I was good with guns during training. Especially rifles. I beat Lex at rifle practice."

"Well I can't see that there's any real likelihood of you getting one. Finding this--" Ebony broke off. "Was that the outer door?"

"Yes." Bray whispered a quick retreat to Ryan and Salene, then rolled away from the door. It wasn't good to be found near the doors when the guards came. He and Ebony listened to the passage of a single pair of feet, imagining the coming Fury as he counted off the doors that he passed. They didn't know for sure how many of the cells were occupied, for people came and went, and few of them wanted to talk. The footsteps stopped outside their door though - or perhaps outside Ryan and Salene's. Bray and Ebony exchanged a look.

"It's not feeding time," she pointed out. "Could be--"

"No. They said three days. It hasn't been two yet. There's still time."

"You hope."

"I'm sure." The door rattled open. "I think." They looked up.

There was a figure outside the door, not entirely visible in the dim light of the corridor. Tall, ram-rod straight, standing with his hands behind his back as though he had no need to fear an attack from the two waiting prisoners, he rocked once on his heels and his toes.

"Bray. Ebony." There was a greeting in his voice. A warmth. A sparkle. Bray groaned. Tired, stiff, hungry, hurting, awaiting execution - and now, Racha. Things couldn't really get any worse. A light laugh answered him.

"Now now. Why are you never happy to see me?" The tall figure came closer, blond hair catching the low light levels, and glowing softly. A smile, slight but warm, was directed straight at Bray, and the bright black eyes twinkled with familiarity and flirtation. Racha, it seemed, never changed.

"What do you want?" Bray rose painfully to his feet, and Racha winced in sympathy.

"You're not looking too good."

"It was a big fight."

"I heard. I was impressed. Shame I wasn't there."

"Yeah. Then you could be dead too." Ebony also stood up, though she found that she needed Bray's help to make it all the way up. "Come to gloat, have you? Only we're getting a bit bored with all the people coming to tell us about our executions."

"Executions? Oh, that. Yes, it does seem a waste." The sparkling eyes lingered on Bray. "They're planning to hang, draw and quarter you, you know."

"And you've come to tell us all about it?" Bray made sure that Ebony was safely leaning against a wall, then took a step towards Racha. "We're really not in the mood."

"I shouldn't think you are. But then I didn't come here to gloat." He folded his arms, still noticeably keeping his hands well away from his gun. "You know me, Bray. I like a challenge. I told you all about the rebellion I was hoping you'd lead; but that didn't really get off the ground, did it. I'm a little disappointed to be honest. I've been feeding your Mall Rat friends all this time; doing my best to wind them up, get them angry. You know - I don't think your friend Pride can stand the sight of me."

"Neither can I."

"Now is that friendly?" Racha's own smile didn't waver. If anything it grew. "Thing is, Bray, I was serious when I said that I wanted the entertainment. I want battles and rebellion. I want war. The Mall Rats are a wash out, and the only people who have managed to fight at all are about to get killed. In a very imaginative fashion, granted - and I do have to admit that I'd quite like to see somebody being hanged, drawn and quartered - but it rather works against my interests this time." He beamed. "Besides, we're friends, aren't we."

"Friends? You shot me!"

"Shot at you, there's a difference. And, okay, so I was going to kill you when we first met, but I've explained that." He shrugged. "Come on. If I was to make you an offer, would you choose the hanging instead? And the drawing and the quartering?"

"Probably depends on the offer." Bray looked over at Ebony, who waved a hand to show that she was ready to listen. "Go ahead. What is it?"

"Well..." Racha leaned against the wall, deliberately leaving the door unguarded as though as an invitation. "It's like this. I like a good fight."

"If you want to go one on one it wouldn't be too much of a fight right now."

"No, I noticed that. You should take better care of yourself. But no, that's not what I'm looking for. Just yet anyway. You could always leave that little offer open for another day."

"I don't think so. Get on with it. What exactly is your warped little plan?"

"Warped?" Racha's eyes glittered in their familiar merry way. Apparently it was impossible to insult him. "Silver has plans for this city, you know."

"Don't you mean the 'Lord Brigadier-General' Silver?"

"Yes... he always did like grandeur. Not the most military-minded of the lot of us. But anyway, he plans to crush this city at his feet, as you've probably noticed. You're not his only example, you know. As if disembowelling you while you're still alive, in front of as many citizens as he can gather in one place isn't deterrent enough against rebelling... he's also just had one hundred people taken at random from amongst the citizenry, and shot. Their bodies will be displayed in the front yard of St Francis' Grammar School. Know the one? I see you do. One hundred decaying bodies won't do much for the nice paving and the pretty little colonnades, will they. It's all part of the plan to stop any more attempts at fighting back."

"Which is what you don't want," put in Ebony. Racha nodded at her.

"Precisely. I don't want a dead city, in thrall to its totalitarian leader. I want unrest. Fighting. Chaos. I hear that you know a little something about that yourself, Ebony."

"You've been checking up on me." She sounded flattered, and couldn't help a smile.

"Asking questions. I've heard a lot about you and a guy named 'Zoot'. Some kind of leader? 'Power and chaos' is a nice mantra. My kind of sentiment."

"If you're looking for Zoot," Bray's voice was like ice, "then you've come to the wrong place."

"Friend of yours as well was he? Well anyway, it's not Zoot I want. Just a little of his vision. Which is why I've decided that Silver has to go." He smiled patiently. "What do you think?"

"I think you're crazy." Bray shook his head. "You? One man against Tribe Fury? And I thought our plan was nuts."

"Ah. But you see it wouldn't be just one man, and it wouldn't be against the whole of Tribe Fury. I'm second in command, Bray. I have a lot of support. I've also been overseeing the training of the new recruits, in conjunction with some of my more like-minded colleagues. Now, I can't exactly lay claim to half of the tribe, but certainly a good slice of them are mine, and they're ready to jump when I tell them to. And you're going to help."

"Huh?" Ebony pushed away from the wall, taking a step closer as though by doing so she might be able to discover whether or not he were making some mad joke. Racha, of course, merely smiled.

"Why not? It's perfect. We have a big fight - a civil war. It could last for months. You bring in as many city folk as you can - they'll listen to you, and they'll have to fight on one side or the other, or they'll just get swept away - and in return you get your lives... so long as you can keep them. You get Silver and his stranglehold gone; and you get a far, far better chance than you have now of getting your city back. Well, back to what it was like after the adults died, anyway. It'll be a while before you get it back to how it was before we came. What do you say?"

"You're... mad." Bray was glad of the wall to lean against. "Civil war? With the kind of arms you people have? There are grenades. Tanks! There'll be nothing left. Nobody left. It'll be chaos. Madness. Mayhem."

"It'll be a proper war. Me and my side against Silver and his people. I get my entertainment, you get your chance to fight back."

"Fight back? All that you're offering is a chance to watch my city tear itself apart. There wouldn't be a building left standing. I have friends out there!"

"Turn me down and you die, Bray. Ebony." Racha's eyes, still warm but now showing an obvious warning, moved slowly between the two of them. "Turn me down and in a month there'll be no more chance of a rebellion. One hundred people shot dead in reprisals? Two familiar figures killed horribly? Silver increasing the patrols, sending tanks rumbling down the high streets, shooting every Independent who can be found? Another month and this place will be a mindless testament to military might. Everybody obeying every order, all spark of life gone. I may be offering you chaos, but I'm also offering you freedom of choice. When you've got chaos, you never know what the outcome will be. So what do you say? What would your friend Zoot have said?"

"Leave Zoot out of this." Bray's eyes burned. "Damn you, I wouldn't take up a single offer you could make, and certainly not one that--"

"Bray?" It was Ryan's voice, coming from beneath the door opposite. Bray's hot, angry eyes shot towards the source of sound.

"Keep out of this, Ryan. Salene."

"It's our city too, Bray. And this guy is right. Chaos doesn't beat order I guess, but it beats the kind of order he's talking about. I know I don't know much about Tribe Fury, but if they're planning to crush the city, then fighting back has to be better."

"You want the whole city to tear itself apart? You want the old days back and worse?" Bray was remembering the heat of battle, and how easily he had seemed to embrace its chaos; how loudly he had heard himself shouting Zoot's old battle cry. He had frightened himself, and he didn't want to know just how much of Zoot was within him. Just how much of what had turned Martin into Zoot might be in him too. It didn't help that the Guardian was out there somewhere, wanting to inspire his own kind of chaos, trying to follow the way that he thought was Zoot's. Ryan was silent for a moment.

"I don't want anybody to die, Bray," he said in the end. "But if Salene and I ever get to have the baby we nearly had before, I want it to grow up with a mind of its own, not as part of a defeated underclass. What hope do any of us have being ruled by people like this?"

"Your friend has got a lot of sense." Racha threw a glance towards the door to Ryan's cell. "Maybe I should be speaking to him instead. What do you say... Ryan was it? Would you take up my offer?"

"Not without Bray." Ryan, on the other side of the door, held Salene's hand tightly. He knew how much all of this talk frightened her, and he didn't blame her in the slightest. "I'm no leader, or planner. All I know how to do is fight."

"Then already our numbers are swelling, Bray." Racha held his arms out wide, as though presenting his offer as some tangible thing. "The guards will be along soon on their regular patrol. You don't have very long to decide. Stay here and die, and consign the city to the scrap heap; or give it one last chance to defend itself, and walk out of this door with me now. I have a truck waiting, and a place where we can go. I'll give you a chance to get stronger again - a week maybe, or two. Then you go out into the city, and you give a gun to everybody who'll stand with us. You tell them that the time has come; and I'll tell the same to my friends. One word, Bray. One word and it's death or war."

"Are you really telling me that if I say no you won't go ahead with your own rebellion? You don't need me."

"Maybe. I need the city people you can get on my side, but I might get by okay without you. I want you though, Bray. You're my mascot. My inspiration. The pacifist, struggling for peace, wanting everybody to be nice to each other, but caught in the middle of bigger and bigger wars. You say no and I'll forget the whole thing. I'll follow Silver. I'll find my entertainment some other way - like in hunting down the Independents. The Mall Rats. Your friend Amber. Maybe her baby can be my new mascot. My new little inspiration."

"Why you--" Bray started forward before he remembered that he really wasn't up to a fight. Racha would probably have been faster than him anyway. The Fury grinned merrily, his bright black eyes as bright as they had ever been, mocking Bray as he came to a reluctant halt.

"So what do you say? Shall we turn this city into a war zone? Shall we raise the ghost of Zoot?"

"Yes." Bray hissed the word out between clenched teeth, as furious as Ebony had ever seen him. Only she could see the pain that was in his face as well as the rage. "Damn you, yes."

"Good." Racha threw him a key. "Then let your friends out and let's get moving. We've still got to get out of here, yet."

Chapter Text

They had decided to travel by night and lie low during the day, sticking as much as was possible to buildings all of the time. It was almost possible to traverse some areas of the city without ever going outside, for the buildings were close together, and a number of walls were missing or holed. Amber wished she had spent more time out of the Mall in the past, and less time organising work rosters and peace plans, but Sasha seemed to have an in-built sense of direction. He hadn't spent much time in the city, but with KC to lend help where necessary they were able to make good headway. Amber found the going rather harder than she might have expected, and often had to lean on Sasha for assistance over some of the rougher terrain. Michaels wandered along behind them, apparently highly grateful for their company, but convinced every second of the way that he was about to see his avenging former colleagues swooping down upon them. He wouldn't believe that he could ever be safe, and even after Sasha had helped him to clean off his tribal paint, and alter his clothing as much as he could, still he wouldn't believe that he looked like anything other than a desperate and obvious deserter. His spirits were higher though, and he was able to warn them, as they walked, of some of the places where they would be most likely to meet with patrols. He was quite sweetly apologetic, thought Amber, between her slips and struggles, about his lack of rank within the tribe. As a lowly private he was not privy to the ins and outs of troop movements, and only knew what it had been decided that he needed to know. It was better than nothing though, and he did save them from at least one close call. Amber, however, was beginning to lose her interest in such things anyway.

It was harder to walk. Her back hurt more, and the pressure on her pelvis seemed huge. Each step brought more discomfort. Sasha had to help her more and more as the night wore on, and by the time that dawn began to cast its first shadows, she was beginning to think that she wasn't going to be able to walk much further. Sasha frowned over at her.

"Are you alright, Amber?"

"Alright isn't quite how I'd put it." She winced. "This isn't much fun, you know. Don't get pregnant. It isn't worth it."

"I'll give it a miss then." He helped her climb over a pile of fallen roof tiles. "You're looking a bit pale. Are you going to be able to carry on?"

"I don't know." She pressed a hand to her back. "I've been getting these cramps. It's making walking painful. It feels like all the bones around my hips are grating against each other." She stumbled slightly and he caught her. "Ow. The cramps are getting worse. How much longer are we going to be walking for?"

"Just take it easy, okay?" He called a halt, even though they had been hoping to get some way further before the sun rose high enough to really call this morning. KC came wandering back, looking disconsolate.

"I thought we were supposed to be getting somewhere more towards the centre of town? We've probably got another half an hour's walking time before--"

"Amber can't go any further." Sasha gestured for Chloe to join him. "She's in a lot of pain."

"Must be the baby." Chloe was regarding Amber with a critical eye. "Trudy gasped a lot like that before her baby came, and that hurt a lot too. Remember, Amber?"

"Huh?" Eyes now wide, Amber recalled that particular incident only too well. "No. No way. This baby is not coming now."

"When's it due?" asked KC, rather practically. Amber frowned.

"I... well I don't know exactly. Everything got so confused... and the last few weeks have been rather blurred. I'm sure it's still too early."

"Doesn't look too early." Michaels was watching her with a speculatory look in his eye. "You can't get much bigger."

"Huh?" Another spasm of pain rocked through Amber, and she moaned. It was beginning to feel as though this wasn't just cramp after all. Could she really have entered labour? Chloe took her hand.

"It's alright, Amber. You helped Trudy. You know what to do. We don't have any towels, but we could use some of our clothes maybe, to wrap the baby up when it comes, and clean it up a bit."

"I have some... bits and pieces." Sasha emptied his bag onto the floor, coming up in the end with two pieces of what might once have been towelling. "They're clean. Well... it might do for wrapping the baby up in. I don't know where the nearest maternity store is."

"Maybe we can find something." KC caught Michaels by the arm. "Come on."

"Out there?" The other boy's eyes grew round, but he followed KC anyway. Chloe started trying to make Amber more comfortable.

"You should probably leave too," she told Sasha, but he shook his head.

"I can't. You can't manage this on your own. Amber?"

"Don't go." She took his hand, clinging on tightly. "You've been... Well. You've got me this far. I need you now."

"Then I'm here. Um..." He felt helpless. "Look, I know the theory, but..."

"It's all part of nature. It'll do it all itself. Most of it. I hope." She clenched her teeth at another spasm of pain. "Aren't there supposed to be injections? Things to take the pain away?"

"And nurses in nice uniforms, and medical students taking notes, and colour coded identity bracelets." Sasha looked around. "I'd settle just for somewhere a bit cleaner."

"Trudy got really sick because the Mall wasn't clean enough." Chloe looked doubtful. "Maybe you should hold on for a bit, Amber? We might be able to find somewhere nicer."

"It doesn't work that way, Chlo." Amber reached out her free hand for the girl. "I'm sorry. I thought when the time came I'd just nip off somewhere and have it behind a bush or something. It seemed... a lot simpler... when... Ow."

"We should time the contractions," said Sasha, whose mother had had a fondness for medical dramas once upon a time. "And isn't there something you're supposed to do with your breathing?"

"My... pre-natal class... wasn't up to much." She clenched her teeth, and held both their hands rather too tightly. "Where did... the others go? Snuck off..."

"KC wouldn't want to help deliver your baby," pointed out Chloe. Sasha grinned.

"And would you want him to? He said he was going to look for things that might help, but I don't know what they're hoping to find. This doesn't look like a shopping area, or a residential one. I thought I saw a post office sign a while back, but it's offices around here mostly."

"Hope they're careful... be light soon..." She leant her head back against him. "Just what we need... have to rescue them."

"The baby's first mission." Sasha had to laugh at that. "I wonder if you'd be the first freedom fighter with a baby strapped to her back?"

"I doubt it. Ow! Bloody hell!"

"Don't talk like that in front of the baby." Chloe looked from one to the other of them. "How long?"

"Who knows? Some people stay in labour for... for hours. Days. If the baby isn't in quite the right position--" She broke off. "This hurts. This really hurts. Sasha, what happens if I scream and somebody hears?"

"I don't think there's anybody about. But try to hold yourself back." He handed her one of the towels. "Bite on this."

"Oh, that'll work." Nonetheless she bit down, trying to compose her mind. "We shouldn't have let the others go. They should be keeping watch. They could be... hours."

"They won't stay away that long." Sasha looked in the direction that the two boys had taken, and hoped that he was right. Michaels might be too scared to take risks, but the same could rarely by said of KC. Sasha didn't know him very well, but he knew that the boy was hardly the circumspect type. KC and wild behaviour - and, it had to be said, wild luck - tended to go hand in hand.

In point of fact KC was being sensible enough, careful about where he walked, and doing his best not to break cover. It was still too dark for him to be sure of seeing any guards, but he knew that they had night vision capabilities, and would be able to see him long before he could see them. With that in mind he clung to whatever cover he could. It was easy enough. There was a lot of rubble here, even inside the buildings. A lot of roofing had come down; a lot of chunks of masonry had fallen from a lot of walls. It even looked as though an entire building or two had fallen down. He commented on it to Michaels, who nodded sagely.

"Grenades," he said, as though it were obvious. "See? Blast scars. Shrapnel pieces. Explosions of some kind. Probably Tribe Fury."

"Rooting out dissenters with bombs, huh." His sharp eyes spotted an empty magazine, and he picked it up. "Guns, too. I'm glad I wasn't on the wrong side of this."

"I'm glad I wasn't on either side of it." Michaels scrambled over some loose stones. "There's lots of stuff buried in here. Must have been a big building."

"Bits of computer. Bits of desk too. Probably an office block. Five or six storeys if the other buildings are anything to go by." KC pushed on past the worst of the rubble. "I wonder who it was who made the Furies do all of this?"

"It'll be us next time if we're not careful." Michaels frowned, pointing ahead. "What's that?"

"Looks like material. So long as it's not a body."

"It's a bag." Michaels worked hard to pull it free, then blanched noticeably. "Somebody's still holding on to it."

"They are?" Rather gingerly, KC leant forward. Sure enough, gripping onto the handle of the bag was a pale, cold hand. He swallowed hard. "I wonder who he was. Still, I guess... well it's not like he's going to need the bag anymore, is it."

"Must have been a scavenger. Probably looking through the rubble some time after the explosion, and got caught in a landslide." Michaels seemed to think that he was pointing to obvious signs of this, but it all went over KC's head. Different styles of rubble perhaps. Deciding not to worry about it, he loosened the bag's dangling strap from the grip of its tenacious possessor, then moved well away from the rubble. The last thing that he wanted was to be the second victim of loose stones.

"Does it feel full?" asked Michaels. KC gave it an experimental shake.

"Pretty much, yeah. Want to see what our friend was hoarding?"

"If it's nothing worthwhile, can we give him his bag back? Only he looked pretty determined to keep it."

"Did, didn't he." Although he had been as bothered as Michaels by the sight of the dead hand, KC rather liked the atmosphere of faintly ghoulish humour. "Dying to keep it, maybe?"

"Just open it." Michaels was looking about, nervous again, although they were more or less sheltered from all sides in their current position. "What have we got? Food?"

"No." KC sat back on his heels, disappointed. "Baby stuff. Look at this. Nappies. Old fashioned ones with pins. Baby powder, lotion. And this." He held up a small soft bear by one leg, and a bell in its ear jangled merrily. "What the hell is this?"

"I hope that guy wasn't a father." Rather morose, Michaels took the bag, burrowing down into it. The only food inside seemed to be a few tins of fruit purée and some baby formula. Not particularly appetising to a twelve year old boy. There was something else, though, and he fished it out. "Well this could be useful anyway."

"Hey, let me look at that." Suddenly attentive, KC snatched for the object, holding it close to his eyes. The pale light was stronger now, but dawn was not yet properly upon them, and it was not easy to make out all the details - but it was certainly clear that in his hands he was holding a penknife. It was big; at least five inches long with the blade still folded inside, and was decorated in black and silver. He knew that there was a scuff mark on the other side even before he turned it over; knew that, if he opened out the blade, there would be a scar in the metal near the base. He knew because he had put it there, when he had borrowed the knife two or three months before. It was Bray's knife; and it was becoming increasingly obvious, as he looked it over once again, that this was Bray's bag. There was the badge that Danni had given him, hidden before by a fold of material; there was the patch that Bray had sewed on himself, rather cack-handedly, after tearing the material on a fence escaping from some Demon Dogs, what seemed like years ago. KC thought about that dead, pale hand, and went almost as pale himself.

"What's wrong?" asked Michaels, seeing the change come over the other boy, but not seeing anything that might have caused it. KC looked over at him, momentarily forgetting that Michaels was a new acquaintance, and not somebody who had ever been in the Mall alongside Bray.

"I know the guy that this bag belongs to," he mumbled in the end, remembering now how Trudy had asked for some supplies for Brady. Apparently those supplies had never made it back to the Mall. But that body couldn't have been there that long; could it? Shouldn't it have been decayed had that been the case? He shook his head, and stuffed everything back into the bag, hanging it over his shoulder.

"We should get back," he said gruffly. "We said we'd look for some baby stuff, and I guess that's what we've found."

"Yeah. Hell of a coincidence." Michaels looked back towards the pile of rubble, where their dead benefactor was hidden from view. "Should we... I mean, if that bag belongs to somebody you know...?"

"That wasn't him. I mean... well it could have been. I'm hoping it wasn't. But listen, we've got to keep quiet about him, okay? We found this bag, and you don't say anything about me recognising it."

"Okay." Michaels was frowning, but he didn't question the order. He had been well trained not to. "But if you recognise it, won't they?"

"Chloe maybe. Sasha would have no reason to, and Amber ought to be too distracted. Besides, things like this badge... I don't know if she's ever seen it. She's the important one, anyway. We can't go telling her that the owner of this bag is dead. Even if she does already suspect it."

"That guy was... That was him?" In a flash of understanding, Michaels gaped back once again at the pile of rubble. "That's her baby's father back there?"

"It's his bag, yeah." KC might have appreciated the irony of Bray's weeks old gathering of supplies eventually being used to help his own child - if he had known anything about irony, and hadn't been quite so distracted. "But there's no sense in thinking about it. If that's him dead back there, there's nothing we can do for him. If it wasn't him... then he's still probably dead somewhere else, and there's no sense in upsetting Amber about it."

"Fair enough." Michaels, who had no desire to upset Amber about anything, nodded his neatly cropped head. "Think she's had it yet?"

"I don't know. Hope so. Last thing I want is to walk into the middle of a maternity ward." KC quickened his pace, for now that dawn was coming, it was coming faster all the time. Soon daylight would be properly upon them. "Boy or girl? Loser has to take first watch."

"Boy." Michaels managed a smile that was almost jaunty, before letting it trickle away again. "KC...?"

"Yes." Feeling an awkward question coming on, KC wondered if this was how annoying he could be at times. There wasn't a great deal of difference in age between himself and Michaels, and he wasn't sure which was the elder, but the Fury boy seemed very much his junior in some ways. Perhaps it was nice to suddenly acquire a little seniority - KC hadn't quite decided that. All he knew was that Michaels needed to gain some self-confidence, as quickly as possible.

"Do you think Amber and Sasha like me?" It wasn't the question KC had been expecting, and he frowned.

"Like you? Why wouldn't they? Why would they? They don't know you. You're just a kid who turned up, and helped us all avoid a patrol last night. We appreciate that."

"Yeah, but I'm the enemy, aren't I. I know Chloe doesn't see me that way, but then I doubt she sees anybody that way. And you're friendly enough."

"You're unarmed, and I know I could break your jaw if I tried." It was a line KC had once heard Lex use, and was rather pleased to hear himself saying it now; pleased and proud, for he knew that it had been no idle boast. Michaels might be military trained, but KC was willing to bet that he would win in a hand to hand fight. Michaels nodded.

"Maybe. It's just... I was up in the hills. I was part of the group that separated Amber from her boyfriend before. My unit commander took him - Bray, isn't it - off down to the city, and I was supposed to stay with a few others and watch over Amber. We thought she was dying, and the others decided we had to leave her to it. I didn't want to, but... well you don't get any choice when you're just a private. So we left. I don't think she recognises me. She was in pretty bad shape when I saw her last. But even so..."

"If she recognises you she'll either keep quiet because she's forgiven you, or she'll flip one day and try to tear your head off." Having got on the wrong side of Amber once before, KC could only think back with awe to the girl's furious temper. She had blamed him for letting Tribe Circus into the Mall, leading to the sacking of the place, as well as Ebony awarding herself Bray as thanks for saving all their lives. All in all, KC didn't envy Michaels, if Amber did remember how the timid little boy had featured in her life once before. Michaels didn't look especially reassured. For some reason KC found that faintly amusing. Trying to pull the boy back out of the doldrums, he kicked a likely looking stone in a neat cross pass that rather took Michaels by surprise; but to his credit the boy reacted almost immediately, passing it back with some skill. KC grinned. It was always good to relax occasionally; even in the middle of a war zone, when there could be eyes and guns watching at any time. Passing the makeshift ball back, he broke into a run, and together the two boys traversed the abandoned buildings on their way back to the others. It was only the sound of a baby crying that interrupted their momentum; and they both ground to a halt then, thoughts returning to their bet. KC grinned wickedly.

"Double or nothing on that baby? Loser has to take the next watch, and change the first nappy."

"Yuck." Michaels didn't hesitate though; he wanted KC to think that he was up for anything. "You're on."

"Cool." And, 'ball' game forgotten, they broke once more into a run. There was only one other thought in KC's mind now besides the gender of the baby, and that was the bag that he was carrying. Best not to deal with it yet, he thought. Once Amber was up and about again, maybe. Maybe then he should say something? Or maybe it would be better if he said nothing at all. He had no idea who that was buried in the rubble, nor how he had come to be there, recently dead, so long after Bray had set out to collect the very supplies that KC now held. If Bray had indeed been fighting wars with Ebony, then presumably this was no recent collection that he had made? But then he didn't know that either. All in all, it was best to keep quiet. Best now just to think about the baby. That was plenty for them all to worry about.

Chapter Text

Whilst Amber was walking her last few miles before going into labour, Lex and his hand-picked team of Badlanders were forcing their way through the secret entrance to the hotel, taking the shortest route they could find down into the cellars. It was a very surprised Lex, though, who pushed his way into the underground level of the hotel, fully expecting to find a phalanx of guards to fight his way through, only to discover Jack there instead. The smaller boy jumped like a startled gazelle, and almost dropped the makeshift weapon he was holding. A chair leg, some part of Lex's mind registered, before wondering exactly what the boy was doing there holding it. His eyes narrowed.

"Tribe Fury's latest recruit?" he asked suspiciously. Jack frowned.

"Huh? What? Why are you... I mean, pardon?"

"You know this guy?" Stepping past Lex, Krishnan held up his own weapon; a bulbous club almost the size of his own head. Jack flinched away, entirely forgetting his chair leg, and the fact that he had been left on guard. He remembered both at the last moment, and tried to brandish the chunk of wood in an appropriately threatening manner. Krishnan laughed.

"He's no Fury."

"Of course I'm not!" Insulted by the mere suggestion, Jack lowered his chair leg. "I came here to rescue Bray."

"So did we." Lex looked around. "Where are the guards?"

"There weren't any. We haven't seen anybody. Pride said he thought he heard an alarm when we first broke in, but I didn't hear anything. So maybe they're off on some drill." He frowned up at Krishnan. "Who's this?"

"A friend. I think." Lex moved aside, gesturing for his little band of companions to follow him into the cellar. "Krishnan, David, Sarah. Jack. One of the Mall Rats." He reached out, lowering both Krishnan's club and Jack's chair leg. "You said Pride was here?"

"Yeah. He, Luke and Tai-San are off checking the cells. There are quite a few down here." A broad grin crossed Jack's oddly childish face. "Lex, this is great. I can't believe you're here. We thought something must have happened to you. I mean, it's been what? Five days?"

"Something like that. But I always fall on my feet, you should know that." Lex could never keep his natural conceit from surfacing. "Like a cat."

"Yeah, well you'd better be a quieter cat. Pride figures it's best not to let the whole building know we're here." Jack moved a little way down the corridor, to a place where doors were visible set in opposite pairs, branching off into several different columns. Lex didn't remember there being so many, but then the Locos had only ever had need of a few cells. The rest of the cellar had been closed off then; a place of dust, cobwebs and collected detritus. It was part of a military machine now, and all of that was gone.

"You mentioned Tai-San?" he asked, apparently trying to sound indifferent. Jack grinned.

"Yes. We thought we'd bring the biggest force we could, but there's been nothing for us to do. If you listen you can hear people upstairs, so I guess somebody could come down here any time, but it's quiet as..." He trailed off, unwilling to finish off the simile. "Well, it's quiet."

"Or at least it was." Pride melted out of the shadows in the quiet, unobtrusive way he had, that Lex had so often envied. "Hello Lex."

"Pride." Neither looked pleased to see the other. Perhaps they were, or perhaps they weren't. Either way it wasn't something that they would ever show. "So where's Bray? Or did you decide to leave him behind? I know he can be an irritating sod at times, but still..."

"He's not here." Pride was looking about with bright, alert eyes. "Every cell down here is empty."

"You think they're keeping him somewhere else?" asked Jack. Pride regarded him in silence for a second, then held out what looked like a small bead.

"I think it's from Ebony's hair," he said, tossing it to Lex. "Tai -San think so too. They were here."

"Then are we too late? Have they already gone to be executed?" Lex felt his pulse rate stir uncomfortably. "And where's Tai-San?"

"Trying to get some vibes from the cell where I found that bead." Pride's tone of voice didn't show whether or not he shared the girl's belief in such things. "But no, I don't think they've gone for that. I think they've escaped. I heard an alarm klaxon sounding before I came in, and there's got to be some reason why there's no guards anywhere down here."

"Escaped? We came all the way here for somebody who's already escaped?" David sounded annoyed, and Lex couldn't help sharing the sentiment. Bloody Bray. Always doing his own thing.

"Well that was an almighty waste of time," he growled. Jack looked faintly hurt.

"No it wasn't. Found each other, didn't we? We were worried about you, you know. We thought Tribe Fury had shot you or something."

"They still might, if you lot don't keep your blasted voices down." Pride was looking a little nervous. "If Bray did escape, they're going to be pretty anxious to get him back. I'd suggest we get out of here before somebody gets us instead."

"Not a bad idea. Can't say that I want to be executed before half the city in your mate's place." David shouldered his own home-made club. "Do I take it we're going into retreat?"

"Tactical withdrawal." Lex was scowling more than ever now. What would Craig say? He'd smile his slightly superior, Prefecty smile, and point out that he had never wanted this mission to go ahead in the first place. They had risked an awful lot for nothing. "Come on. We should get the hell out of here. Be bloody embarrassing to get caught down here being pointless."

"We've regrouped. Tested the secret entrance. Proved we can get into the hotel. Not all that pointless." Pride glanced back down the corridor at the sound of footsteps. "And there's somebody coming who probably thinks this has been about all kinds of things rather than nothing."

"Tai-San!" Lex moved forward faster than he would ever have thought that he might, pushing past Jack, forgetting the cool image that he liked to project to the Badlanders, ignoring the startled Luke who came into view first. His eyes rested solely upon the second arrival; the owner of the second set of footsteps. Upon his wife. "Tai-San. Babe..."

"Lex." She acted as though she had expected to see him here; as though it were no great surprise; no great reunion. He looked hurt.

"Well aren't you pleased to see me? I could have been dead!"

"You could be, Bray could be, all kinds of people could be or are." Her bright eyes fixed his with one of her most matter of fact stares. "But there's a lot of guards on their way down here right now. I don't know why they're coming, but this isn't the time for greetings."

"Guards?" He brightened immediately, and she saw the desire for a fight light his face.

"Yes. Twenty soldiers with guns against us armed with bits of wood. Not exactly what I would call fun. Shall we take this outside?"

"That makes sense." Krishnan, who had no idea who any of these people were, and really didn't care, began to head back the way they had come. "Which is good, because not much else does."

"It's not so bad." David was apparently feeling optimistic. "The deal was that we rescue this guy Bray, remember? Nobody has to know he got himself out. We just got ourselves an army."

"Unless he was just moved somewhere else, and is going to get killed anyway." Sarah, who was in somewhat less of an optimistic mood, hurried them along. "I hope somebody somewhere thinks this is funny. All this effort for a guy who isn't where he's supposed to be, and who we don't even know anyway. It's a bloody joke."

"Yeah." At the back, only just remembering that they were supposed to be in a hurry, Lex was holding hands with Tai-San. "A joke. Sure."

"I'm supposed to be cross with you. Running out on me. On all of us. Risking everything." She held his hand just a little bit tighter, as though afraid that she might be about to lose him again. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again."

"Yeah." He grinned. "Good old Bray. Always getting into trouble. If it hadn't been for him I don't know when we'd have got back together."

"And now what?" Scrambling up out of the cellar, they pressed, in a hurried jumble, into the tunnel that would lead them back outside the hotel. Tai-San still contrived to hold onto Lex's hand, despite the crush and the jostling. "Where do we go now?"

"Like the others said; providing Bray can keep from being publicly executed for a while - and providing the Furies don't want anybody to pay for his disappearance - we can guarantee support. I'll explain it all later, but we can begin to fight back, Tai-San. We could even have our own army. A small one, but an army." He looked excited, and she knew how much this meant to him. Lex had always wanted to be a leader of men; a warrior. It struck her that it was times like these that really made him feel most alive. But then that was Lex. There was no sense wishing otherwise. As the cold of the approaching dawn welcomed them at the end of the tunnel, and as, miles away, Amber sank to the ground at the pain of her baby's birth, Tai-San felt her heart surging with renewed hope. New beginnings; the air was alive with them. The city was turning a corner. And like all the best corners, it was keeping its outcome to itself.

Chapter Text

Tribes. The city was based on them now. Little tribes fighting each other. Bigger tribes clashing in virtual civil war - the city was used to it, and so were its young inhabitants. Tribal warfare. Division. Sides. Now it was splitting again.

Tribe Fury were the biggest group. They had their own forces, and a sizeable section of the local populace, too scared to stand against them. They had their weapons, their machinery, their mechanised transport, and their food stores. They had the city, too, but lately it seemed that they did not necessarily have its inhabitants. The long weeks of the occupation were starting to gall, and although the majority of citizens had no intention of risking their lives, liberty and food supplies in standing up to a likely immovable object, enough of them did have exactly that intention. The seeds of dissent had been sown, and they had been spread far and wide. Silver and his men weren't worried by the growth of the resistance, but they were bothered by the nature of it, for whilst ordinary citizens might be permitted to display dissatisfaction with their lot - within very strict limits - dissension amongst the ranks was unacceptable; and yet it had happened. To Silver's lasting disbelief, his own second in command had led a contingent of Furies out into the city, and was collecting civilian support in a stand against the Occupiers. The half-starved Independents were on the surface not much of an enemy, but any group could become a force to be reckoned with when they had the right people behind them. Brigadier Racha was probably anything but the right person to lead the civilians of the city, but he was the right man to lead a rebellion. He was single-minded to the point of obsession, and he had no normal concept of danger or of perspective. Silver's advisors had been trying to warn their Lord Brigadier-General about Racha's instabilities for some time, but only now, when evidence of his treachery was undeniable, did the leader of Tribe Fury choose to listen. Silver believed that all his men loved him, as the people of the city would one day come to do. In his own way he was as blinkered and as obsessive as Racha himself; as unable to accept anything that did not fit into his own world view. Now, shaken to the core, he sat alone in his office at the hotel, theorising over Racha's defection - or, as he believed, brainwashing - whilst wave after wave of his men went out onto the streets, charged with the task of making the resistance pay. They marched out in formation every morning, each unit eager to be the one who found Racha, as well as the people that Silver was convinced had taken him against his will. Meanwhile the Fury leader had rations decreased again and again; had hostages taken and homes ransacked; all in the search for his trusted second in command. His generals could see what he could not, although they didn't dare contradict him to his face; for Racha hadn't been brainwashed by anybody. The resistance was entirely of his own making, and entirely by his own free will, and it made up the forces of the second tribe that now held sway over the city, challenging Tribe Fury, and threatening to bring civil war. The result was the growth of two bands of military brawn, backed by civilian recruits willing and unwilling - and both led by deluded maniacs. It seemed impossible that anything could be made out of it; that any end could come to the conflict at all; or, if it did, that it would be a good one. So long as the city still felt worth fighting for, though, Lex wasn't ready to give up. Which was why he was leading a third group now forming amongst the city's young residents. The smallest group. They had no weapons, save the few that they had had stolen. They had little in the way of spare ammunition, or food stores; no transport save skateboards and roller skates; no heavy artillery. They had war paint, and that was just about all.

Amber had not given much thought to what would happen once her baby was born. The focus had always been merely on keeping it safe until it could be; on making sure that it did not again try to deliver itself prematurely. Mindful of the pain and the fear of that experience in the mountains, she had not dared think too hard of the end of her pregnancy, and the moment when she would be able to hold her baby for the first time. There was too great a risk that that happy day might never come. When it did, and she did indeed hold her baby for the first time, she realised that she was entirely unprepared for it. She had no proper or permanent shelter; little food. She was hiding from Tribe Fury like every other Independent, but there was no telling a hungry child about that, or of the need for silence. The baby cried when it was cold, which was often; when it needed changing, which was even more often; when it needed sleep, which was always a problem. She had no bed for it, and often enough once she had managed to get it settled, she had to snatch it up again to run from approaching threats. Having a baby was perhaps the hardest thing to do within the city, and if she had thought that her life was hard as a pregnant woman on the run, it was harder still as a mother. She didn't have a clue how she was going to cope. KC and Michaels, their young Tribe Fury deserter, had found her supplies for the child almost immediately, with a tale of a bag full of oddities discovered in a pile of rubble. It had been useful stuff, but it only solved a few of their problems. Life with a baby was proving to be very difficult indeed.

They had called him Eden, partly at Sasha's suggestion. He was an endearing enough child, with dark hair like his father's, and a fine supply of his mother's restless energy. Chloe doted on him, Sasha behaved like a devoted uncle, and even the nervous young Michaels relaxed when he was helping to look after him. Such fondnesses didn't solve any problems though. They still struggled to find hideouts where the crying wouldn't be heard in the street; to find material for nappies, or a way to wash what had already been used. With her limited diet Amber struggled to provide enough milk, and there seemed little chance of supplementing what she could produce with anything else. If life had been a struggle before it was doubly so now; and that was without the constant worries about Eden's father. Amber had all but convinced herself now that he was dead, and the best exhortations from the others couldn't change her mind. Even Sasha, who wanted nothing more than to win her hand, did what he knew was right and tried to keep her spirits up, insisting that she shouldn't give up hope without proof; but it had been months now since she had last been with Bray, and weeks since she had seen what she thought was him, caught in the middle of a battle she was sure that none but Tribe Fury could have survived. Had they travelled the more populated areas, instead of keeping so very much to themselves, they might have seen the posters that had been spread so thickly amongst the city's other inhabitants, though it would hardly had made Amber feel any better if they had. The posters, which had announced the approaching execution of Ebony and Bray, had not been withdrawn or updated following their escape, and if Amber had known about them any hope that might still have lingered in her heart would only have been destroyed. Instead she merely believed that he was dead because it was better to do so than to let herself hope he was alive, and risk the extra pain of one day discovering her hopes dashed. None of the others could raise her spirits in the slightest, so far as this matter was concerned, and at nights, holding little Eden as he slept, she cried to herself about the father of her child, and sighed out her sorrows for the family that would now never be. Only Sasha could drag her from her sadnesses now - and it was Sasha that she saw as the only possible father for Eden. Her past, so far as she could see it, was gone forever.

With a crack that made Bray's head sing, a bullet smacked into the stone just above him, and he ducked automatically. Dust showered down on him, filling his hair with flakes of stone. Somebody nearby fired back at the sniper, but they were used by now to most of their bullets being wasted. Everybody was positioned too well in the half-ruined buildings, and it was all too easy for a confrontation to become an empty stand-off. They would stand in their shelters and shoot blindly at each other for a few hours, before one or the other side slunk off, preferably without being noticed. Bray wasn't certain how clashes like this were going to win them back the city, but there seemed to be little else to do. When all was said and done, he preferred stand-offs to real battles. It was always better to know that nobody was dying, even if that fact meant that they were making no real progress.

"Taking the air?" Ebony appeared at his shoulder as though by magic, but he didn't jump. Not this time. She was always doing that; always appearing beside him without warning, or melting out of the shadows when she thought he was alone. She liked to think of herself as his partner in all things; his back up; his rear guard. Given that she was generally carrying a gun, she was reasonably useful to have around, he supposed; especially since he preferred to go unarmed himself. He didn't want to shoot anybody; that was for others. Racha, Archer, and the other breakaway Furies, and the civilians they had gathered together to help them. That Bray had gathered together, to be more precise, for that was his real job, and what Racha had always wanted him for - giving stirring speeches and convincing the locals that the fight was possible, and worthwhile. He didn't tell Racha of the stories that he heard from some of those locals - of Lex and a band of followers making the same kind of recruitment drive, setting themselves up to fight the enemy. He told only Ebony, Ryan and Salene about that. If together they helped to make Racha win this war, after all, the general lot of the city dwellers would not improve. Swapping Silver for Racha was hardly ideal. There was a chance that Lex, and whoever he had following him, could provide an alternative to the unhinged Brigadier, and with that in mind it was vital to keep their work as quiet as possible. Bray longed to get in touch with Lex; to help him with his battle, instead of being stuck with this one; but he knew that that was impossible. He only wished that he could do something to help Lex's operation along.

"Bray?" Ebony was clearly feeling ignored. He shot her a sidelong glance.

"What?"

"Penny for them? People are shooting at you, you know. It usually makes sense to pay attention when that's happening."

"They never hit anything." He rubbed the stone dust from his hair. "Sorry. I was miles away."

"Dreaming of Amber again I suppose."

"No." He looked awkward at the admission, as though he felt he was betraying Amber in some way by not thinking of her all of the time. "Lex actually."

"You were dreaming of Lex? You really are feeling lonely."

"You know what I mean. I was thinking about him. What he's up to."

"His suicide mission? Stop with the doe-eyed look, for goodness sakes. He's going to wind up caught in the middle of Racha's lot and Silver's. He doesn't stand a chance. He has half our man power, and none of our firepower. He's already dead."

"Not if we can get him some weapons he isn't."

"We'd never get them away from the stores." Her eyes narrowed. "You're thinking about the ones that Ryan talked about, aren't you. The ones that the adults hid, for their child armies to use against the rest of us. Bray, Tribe Fury are a child army. What makes you think they don't know about that lot already?"

"They might, they might not. They were regular army cadets, not the kind of force Lex and Ryan and the rest of their lot were set up as. And anyway - only the adults knew where those arms were hidden. Tribe Fury might know about them the same as we do - but it doesn't mean that they know where they are. They've never needed to look, for starters. They have all the weapons they need and more besides."

"You said it. More besides. Say Lex does find some hidden cache of - what - a dozen rifles? How's that going to help him? Or us? With the way things are going lately, Lex would walk straight into battle, with his handful of supporters and practically sod all weaponry, and the only people he'd manage to kill before being taken out would be us. Give it up. Concentrate on this fight. That's the way to stay alive."

"I don't want just to stay alive. I want the city back as it was, and I want Amber safe. You might be able just to keep your head down, Ebony, but some of us have more responsibilities than that." He scowled around at their broken stone shelter. "I thought we'd finished with all this. Hiding like rats. But there's always something else, isn't there."

"A Chosen? A Tribe Fury? Probably, yes. This is a world of chaos, Bray - and chaos breeds chaos. We're a long way away from a quiet, well ordered existence, the way it was before the Virus. It took the adults hundreds of years to get that far."

"You're just full of reassurances today, aren't you."

"Hey, I tell it like I see it. Want to build a new world? Then let go of the old one. Stop trying to get back what you've lost, and look for what you can have instead." She leant against the wall, and rested her gun beside her. Whoever their unseen assailants had been, they had apparently gone now - yet another pointless skirmish amounting to nothing.

"You're really serious about Lex being a contender, are you?" she asked, after several moments trying to work out how she felt about that herself. Bray nodded.

"He's under-manned, yes - but if we win this we've still got Racha to get rid of. If Lex could win..."

"If Lex could fight off the whole of Tribe Fury, in a war on two fronts? You do realise how unlikely that is?"

"When we tried to make a stand we didn't have enough people, and we let ourselves get manoeuvred into losing them all in one stupid battle. Lex is headstrong, but he's not crazy. He knows how to fight a battle and win."

"So do I." She looked insulted, and he nodded.

"Sure - but that was different. You didn't have as many people as he does, and you didn't have inside men to help out. Ebony, we can help Lex. We can work for him, while we're looking like we're working for Racha. I've been thinking about it. His problem is manpower, right? Well he's not going to get many more people himself, but we've got a fair few. Why can't we pass them on to him? Racha has me out there spouting his garbage about fighting for a free city - well if I can get people to do what Racha wants, why can't I get them to work for Lex instead? We'd have to choose them carefully. Some of them are so scared they'd go rushing straight to Racha to tell him what we're doing. We've got a lot of people on board that I think we can trust though. People who only joined because they didn't think they had any other choice."

"And Lex is another choice?! If they thought he was they'd have already joined him."

"But with them, and a few more weapons, he could really be another choice! Ebony, all it takes is manpower. If we can get that for Racha, we can get it for Lex. You know we can."

"Maybe." She lifted her gun up again. "But you're talking treachery, Bray. Racha likes you, but if he thinks you're becoming a danger to him, he'll kill you without a second thought. He can afford to kill quite a few of us before he's putting himself in danger of losing too many men."

"I know." He looked away, suddenly seeming very tired, and she reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.

"You been sleeping lately?"

"Sleeping? Racha won't let me sleep. Besides, there's too much to think about."

"Burning yourself out won't help anybody."

"I know." He offered her one of his warm smiles, the kind that they had shared in the old days, before the Virus and the Locos and Amber. Days she didn't want to miss. "Sometimes I just..." He shrugged, and left the sentence unfinished. "See you later. Try not to get shot."

"No bullet would dare hit me." She smiled at him, but he was already walking away by then, back turned to her attempts to make him unwind. Damn it, just when had he got so complicated? It had all been so easy in the past - even after the Virus had come she had always known exactly what to say to him and when; exactly how to get whatever reaction she had most desired. Even on opposite sides they had never failed to connect in some way. Now? Now he was aloof half of the time and confused the rest; a largely uncommunicative automaton, stuck in a situation he despised. Ebony only hoped that his constant detachment didn't prove to be dangerous - in a world where everybody was fighting each other, and he was a well known face, there were risks on every street and in every building. And with so many guns, the risks were greater than before. Watching him until he had vanished into the rubble, she rested her rifle on her shoulder, then turned to head off the other way. So much for their closeness during their time as prisoners of Tribe Fury. Right now all Bray seemed close to were his own unwieldy dreams. Lately she wasn't even sure that he was thinking of Amber. It was almost as if he was beginning to self-destruct.

Although, she mused, with only a bare flicker of amusement, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. After all, it wasn't as though Amber was around to be the one to pick up the pieces.

Amber woke up, as she always did, to stiffness, thirst, and the sound of the baby crying. She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. An old wine cellar had been their shelter this time; a large, cool, underground room beneath a restaurant. They had found a store of tablecloths, and used them to make beds of a sort, behind a rack of dusty bottles of wine that had probably been worth a great deal once; and which would soon, inevitably, be found and drunk by one gang or another. She might have thought it a waste, had she had an interest in alcohol herself, but she didn't, and thought of it only as potential fuel.

"Sleep well?" Sasha was beside her as always, lying just the other side of Eden. The baby lay between them, the safest place they could think of.

"As well as ever." She rubbed her eyes and sat up, looking down at her restless son. "I better feed him. Can you find something to use as a nappy? I think we're out again."

"Sure. I'll cut up some of these tablecloths. Might as well make good use of them." He pulled out his penknife. "He needs a bath. You're supposed to bath them every day."

"I don't think whoever decided that lived like we do." She picked the baby up, and rocked him gently. "Where are the others?"

"I don't know. They were gone when I woke up. Out foraging probably."

"KC and Chloe have become so self-reliant. It's amazing. I always knew KC was pretty tough, or could be, but Chloe has been a quite a revelation recently."

"We all do what we have to." Sasha got up and began collecting tablecloths, setting about the task of cutting them up for their new rôle. "In a few years they might be taking Eden with them."

"I know." She cradled the boy gently in her arms. "If things don't change he could be out there with a gun, or fighting over scraps of food in the street. Anything. But that's tomorrow I guess."

"And anything can happen before tomorrow, right?"

"I don't know." She dredged up a smile, then turned her attention to feeding her son. Sasha took the hint. Sometimes the last thing any of them wanted to think about was tomorrow.

KC and his little band of scavengers returned half an hour later, to the oddly domestic scene of Sasha and Amber arguing over how best to burp the baby. The wine cellar smelt of milk and dust, a peculiar combination with the scent of old spilt alcohol. KC wrinkled up his noise.

"I used to miss milk. Now I'm not so sure."

"There are worse smells to come back to," muttered Michaels wryly. KC nodded.

"Lately, yeah." He threw himself down onto the floor, watching disinterestedly as Sasha returned to cutting up tablecloths. "We found something. Not much though."

"Here." Chloe stepped forward, bearing a packet of dried apricots and a tin of corned beef. "Found them in some rubble. Half buried."

"Chloe! I've told you before about the rubble. You're not to go climbing around in all of that. It just needs for you to knock one stone out of place and you could bring half a building down on top of you." Amber sighed in frustration. Chloe had always done as she was told in the past, but she was so blastedly independent these days. Being stuck inside so much of the time caring for a baby didn't make Amber feel any better placed to reassert her authority, either. She laid Eden down on the ground, and managed to smile. "Well done. Every little helps. But please go easy on the risks."

"If we don't take risks we don't eat." KC edged away slightly when he saw Amber making moves towards changing the baby's nappy. "The less food there is, the bigger risks we have to take."

"Sounds so brave, doesn't he," joked Sasha, "But point a baby's nappy at him and he crumbles."

"I don't see you getting any closer," growled KC. He took a drink from their ever present bottle of water. "What are we going to do today?"

"Do? Has something changed overnight that I'm not aware of?" Wishing for wet wipes and cream, Amber did her best to clean Eden up. "We have a baby to think about, KC. We stay out of sight, and we keep looking for somewhere where we can set up a permanent home. What else?"

"I don't know." KC lowered his eyes, looking unhappy. "I just thought--"

"You want to fight, hard luck." Amber fixed him with a bright stare. "I need you here, KC. Sasha and I can't forage and look after Eden. We need the three of you. I'm sorry."

"We don't all want to fight." Michaels set to work helping Sasha, an intense look on his face. "I want to help you."

"And it's appreciated." Amber offered the boy a smile, but he wasn't looking at her. In the short time since they had found him, he had relaxed a lot, even joking and teasing on occasions; but for the most part he still seemed closed up inside. KC scowled at him.

"I just want to do something more interesting than hiding in buildings, that's all."

"You always want to do something more interesting," Chloe reminded him. "You always want to fight somebody, or join up with somebody, and try to be all heroic. It's like you think it's all a game, but it really isn't." She watched Amber with the baby and smiled childishly, as ever not needing much to rub away the veneer of her maturity. Amber finished changing Eden, and handed him over to her.

"We should think about moving on," she said, trying to sound decisive. "See how far we can get before the fighting starts up again."

"I don't think it's stopped." Michaels had the haunted look in his eyes that talk of fighting always gave him. "There was the usual night fighting of course, But they haven't really let up since."

"None of them wanting their breakfast this morning?" Sasha could rarely find a reason not to joke about something, but Michaels didn't generally appreciate his sense of humour. The boy was a pet project of Sasha's now, and the only thing that could distract him from Amber and Eden. Cheering people up was more than just a livelihood for him. It was almost his life's work.

"Whatever reason it is that usually makes them pack up the fighting at dawn," continued Michaels, with a sudden sharpness in his tone, "doesn't seem to have stopped them today. Not that they're doing much. There haven't been any pitched battles in days."

"Looked to me like it was Tribe Fury just shooting at each other, anyway." KC shrugged at the look he got in reply. "Well it did. I've heard rumours, you know. People saying that it's not so much about the resistance fighting back any more. There are whispers about Lex, but do you think he could get enough people and guns to have started up a constant battle out there? Lex can do just about anything, but nobody could do that so quickly. Not with Tribe Fury being so powerful."

"Fair point," offered Sasha. KC nodded.

"But I've heard talk that Tribe Fury have split, and that's why all this fighting is going on. A breakaway group leading a rebellion against the main army. Could be good news, couldn't it? I mean, if Tribe Fury are fighting among themselves, maybe they're on the way out."

"Good news? You think this could be good news?" Amber looked horror-struck. "KC, if Tribe Fury have split it could be a disaster! Two armies to worry about, instead of just one. Twice the chance of getting shot or captured out there. It'll be harder to find food, harder to find somewhere to shelter. The main army will crack down in response, there'll be less freedom. And then what? Whichever side wins will be ready to crack down on everything. And I mean everything. You think it's a military dictatorship now? You wait and see what it's like being governed by some army fresh from winning a war." She looked towards Sasha. "Tell me I'm over-reacting. Please."

"I don't know that you are." He went over to sit beside her and take her hand. "This doesn't sound good. If I thought there was a chance that these two factions of Tribe Fury would wipe each other out in time, I might be more behind it, but as it is I don't think we stand to gain anything from this. How can we?"

"You're too pessimistic." Even as he said it KC knew that he was being unfair. Pessimism, after all, but not really a charge that could ever be levelled against Sasha. "I thought--"

"It doesn't matter what you thought." Amber stood up, and began packing the sliced tablecloths into the nearest bag. Sasha would want to carry it, she knew, no matter how often she insisted that she could manage. Sasha was just about the only part of her life right now that she felt she could truly rely on, but she didn't want to rely on him too much. She took back Eden from Chloe, and headed to the door. "We have to find somewhere more secure than this," she said, in a voice that shook a little. She was so tired. So very, very tired. Why did life always get so complicated? So dangerous. So exhausting. So difficult. And why did it never seem to get any better? She cradled Eden in her arms, and thought about the life that she was setting him up for. Hard nights, little food, frightened days. Sasha would do his best as a stand-in father, and she knew that they would both always be able to lean on him - but that didn't make them any less hungry, or cold, or scared. It wouldn't make Eden any safer from hypothermia, or shrapnel, or stray bullets. All it really did was make her that little bit less lonely. She wasn't sure quite when her attitudes had changed so much; quite when she had ceased to be content with her lot. Had everything really changed so much in the short hours of her labour, or the moment when Sasha had handed Eden to her for the first time? Or had it been the days since, when she had felt her feelings for the baby grow almost by the hour? So much responsibility. Never before had she missed the guidance of the adults so very much.

Chapter Text

Lex had started to have misgivings. Finding the Badlanders had been good - good for his ego, good for his image - hopefully good for the city. Their tours around various dilapidated tribal headquarters had generally been positive; they had wound up with more people on their side than he had ever dared to expect. The reunion with Tai-San had been wonderful, and he certainly slept much better with her beside him, which was good for his mental well-being. It was just that lately the 'goods' were becoming seriously outweighed by the 'bads'. Seriously enough for Lex to notice - which on the whole meant very serious indeed.

First there was the gun problem. They had one for about every ten people, which was quite a shortfall. Then there were the people themselves - compared to Tribe Fury they had hardly anybody at all. Not that numbers usually bothered Lex; it was just that, when so many of his people were skinny and wasted, and didn't look strong enough to lift the guns that they didn't have anyway... Well it didn't bode well, that was all.

Then there was the civil war. Not that it wasn't gratifying to see your enemy fighting amongst themselves. Killing each other; distracting each other; tying up large numbers of each other's forces in gun battles, and in the process leaving large sections of the city unpatrolled. Every little helped. Both sides were dragging in civilians to help them though, and that meant less civilians available to help Lex. Or willing to risk throwing in their lot with him, anyway, since after his promising start none of them really seemed to think that he had a chance now. Lex maintained that being under-manned, under-armed and underfed whilst fighting one big army was just the same as being in the same situation whilst fighting two smaller armies, but a lot of people disagreed with him. They even quoted history at him, and spoke about 'fighting a war on two fronts', which just annoyed him. What did he know, or care, about history? All he knew about was fighting, and he was going to do that no matter how many people he had on his side, or what they were fighting with, or who they were fighting against. It was all the same to him. Apparently, though, there were very few others who felt the same.

Tai-San was alright. She had her doubts, but she followed where fate led her, and right now that meant being where she was, and doing what seemed to need to be done. She didn't care about fighting wars on two fronts; not if there were two fronts that needed fighting on. She had made a brief speech about going with the flow, and being at one with events, which Lex couldn't claim to have followed too well. He was just grateful for her support.

Pride seemed to be cool about it too, at least as far as Lex could see. He didn't want to be in the city of course - they all knew that - and he really no longer thought of it as being his fight; but he was in the middle of it, and he would carry on being so, for as long as he felt needed, and for as long as escaping the city seemed impossible. Lex was glad to have him. There were few fighters better than Pride, and few with such good heads on their shoulders. Pride might not say much, but what he did say was always worth hearing.

Jack and Trudy were less helpful, but Jack was working hard to come up with some invention that might be of use. Already he had been able to expand upon his water purification system to help supply clean water to their allies, and his method of recharging batteries allowed them torches and personal radios. The latter were mostly courtesy of him too, carefully adapted from stolen Fury radios, and set to use a frequency that he was more or less certain that the Furies wouldn't intercept. There weren't many of them, but it was a start. Trudy was helping in her own way too, setting up a crèche for the handful of small children belonging to their various allies. They spent all day squabbling together in a hastily furnished playroom at the Mall; a place of rugs, cushions and pillows, and the few toys from the Mall's toy shop that had escaped destruction during the various raids that the building had seen. Lex supposed it was being useful; more or less.

Luke was the really useful one. With his bright blue hair he was hardly well camouflaged, but he had a natural ability to be quiet that seemed to enable him to sneak up on anyone. He was responsible for stealing most of the guns and radios, and had even managed to get a couple of uniforms from somewhere. He roamed the streets on a pair of hugely gaudy roller blades that looked like they might once have belonged to a disco queen, overhearing this, filching that, and generally being downright sneaky. He wasn't up to much when it came to actual fighting, although he wasn't a bad shot; but Lex was willing to forgive his aversion to violence when he was managing to sneak hand grenades from out of the hotel cellar without being seen. All in all the various members of the Mall Rats were acquitting themselves particularly well. It was just a shame that none of it seemed to be doing any good.

"Morning." Pride sounded tired, but then he had been on guard all night, and there had been one hell of a day before that. Lex nodded a greeting at him.

"Quiet night?"

"Two patrols went by. One just after it went totally dark, and one just as it was starting to get light. Usual stuff. They didn't take any interest in this place."

"No reason to. They've checked and double-checked this whole area. Besides, we're pretty well camouflaged." Lex handed over a bottle of water and an opened can of baked beans with a fork sticking out of it. "Here. Breakfast."

"Inspiring." Pride took the basic meal, and sat down on a piece of half-tumbled wall. "What's the plan for today?"

"Jack wants to build another water purification whatsit. We could do with another. I'm sending out a team to get some bits and pieces for that. Luke's out hunting for spent cartridges. He thinks between them he and Jack can find a way to make them fire as blanks. Might be a handy way of getting some target practice. Other than that it's business as usual."

"Oh good. Hiding is always such a worthwhile way to spend the day." Pride finished the tin of beans without relish. "I know. We're not ready. Believe it or not I don't really want to be. I just... I want to be doing something. We can sabotage all the cars, and plant all the home-made explosives, that we like. It doesn't make anybody take us seriously."

"I know." Lex shrugged lightly, thinking of his own dreams of glory, on and off the battlefield. Marching at the head of a victorious army, Tribe Fury cowering in defeat, the grateful city ready to declare him their leader. Youngsters gazing at him with the sort of fascinated adoration that KC had always shown towards him. Parades with he and Tai-San watching from on high, waving to the assembled masses... He smiled dreamily, then cast the thought aside. They were doing some good, he knew that. They had even destroyed a tank a few days before. It was just that it was all so slow. So laborious. Not at all the stuff of legend, so far as he could tell. Pride stood up.

"I'm off for some sleep," he announced, sounding as if he might keel over where he stood if he waited much longer. "If the war actually bothers to start - wake me."

"Yeah." Lex slapped him on the back as he passed, then watched him disappear inside. They were using an old warehouse for their battle headquarters, in order to keep the Mall as safe as possible for the children, and he didn't feel at home here. It was a bleak building, increasingly filled by people that he didn't really know; more a halfway house than anything else. The Badlanders had chosen it, the way that they had done so much of the behind the scenes work for all of this. They were still all smiles and encouragement; still talking about making stands and fighting back, and making everything count for something, but he found it all a bit hollow now. Maybe it was the relative inactivity, but his mind seemed more inclined to suspicion now, which was making him wonder just how far he trusted the Badlanders. They had appeared too quickly, too conveniently; had used him all too readily. They were out there somewhere now, doing whatever it was that they did when he wasn't with them, using the famous name of the Mall Rats to win them assistance here and there, returning with food stores to distribute amongst the populace. They did that with a smile, with a kind word, with an advert for their work with the Mall Rats. They collected up the smallest children of the Independents, for safekeeping under Trudy's eyes in the Mall. They were doing their bit, he supposed, in lieu of anything better. What they needed - what they all needed - was for something to happen. Something to get a few balls rolling, and turn this false war into a real one. Then, perhaps, he could start to feel good about all of this; and maybe get to play the role of hero once again. Shouldering his rifle he set off after Pride. Tai-San was inside the warehouse, and she at least could always cheer him up. He felt in need of cheering; of Tai-San's special brand of warmth and care and encouragement. He decided not to tell her that what he really wanted was a fight. Knowing her she would take that far too literally, and she was definitely not the one he wanted to fight; even just in practice. What he wanted from Tai-San was a different kind of contact altogether. And if nothing else, the thought of that was enough to start cheering him up.

It wasn't just Lex and Pride who wanted the stand-off to escalate. It wasn't just the Furies exchanging random bullets who wanted a proper fight. There were other players in the city; others who hoped that there was something to be gained from the struggle. They wanted war because it suited their own plans, regardless of anything else. Regardless of the others in the city, and the dangers, and the virtual certainty that civil war would not make anything better. All they cared about was their own agenda.

Which was why, in the early hours of the morning, whilst Pride was wandering off to bed after eating his cold tin of beans, a shadowy figure was creeping out of one of the many subterranean tunnels, towards the building that housed the hotel's electricity generator. It was old, long abandoned in the days of the adults, but recently returned to duty by Tribe Fury. Lovingly rebuilt, cleaned and oiled in an operation that would likely have made Jack green with envy, it was a cumbersome piece of machinery, and petrol driven. None but Tribe Fury would have been able to keep it going. None but Tribe Fury would have tried.

It was a well guarded building, but Tribe Fury didn't know about the tunnels. The guards didn't see the figure appearing apparently from nowhere, and melting into the early morning darkness of the building's unguarded side. Didn't see him bend and hide something in the long grass that pushed up through the breaking concrete of the ground. He paused for a moment, listening to the voices of the guards at either end of the building, then vanished back into the tunnels as though he had never been there. When the building exploded several minutes later, taking the generator, a sizeable store of petrol, and half a dozen guards with it, the blast was so huge that half of the city saw it. But none of them saw the white-robed blond scurrying away into the darkness that lay beneath their feet.

Bray was standing outside watching the dawn arrive, and trying to hide from Racha, when the bomb went off. He was too far away to feel the ground shake, but he heard the explosion, several seconds after he saw a massive blossoming of flame rise up above the buildings. Black smoke billowed out in every direction, and he saw the chunks of stone thrown up by the force of the blast. He gaped.

"What the hell...?" Some passing civilian - another nameless face, presumably recruited into this madness by Bray himself - stopped to gaze up at the column of smoke and flame. "Where is that?"

"Hotel." Bray left him standing, himself running back into their HQ. He almost collided with Ryan, who was on his way out.

"I thought I heard an explosion?" Ryan's eyes swivelled towards the flame, just now beginning to die down in favour of the spreading smoke. "What's going on?"

"Something's going down at the hotel." Bray raised his voice to call further into the building. "Who's out on patrol by the hotel?"

"Huh?" Archer, Racha's terminal hard-case of a second in command, stuck his head through a nearby doorway. "Hotel?"

"Are you deaf? It sounds like World War Three out there!" Bray pointed back out of the door. "The hotel. Who's out there today?"

"We're not all able to waste our time sitting around outside with our heads in the clouds you know." Archer pushed past Bray and Ryan, looking over towards the scene of the commotion. "Must have been a big blast to show up this far off. You sure it's the hotel?"

"I know this city." Bray looked back towards Ryan. "Hotel, right?"

"Right. Not just a bomb though. There's something else in there." Ryan's eyes narrowed. "Like petrol. That electricity generator?"

"That'll be it, yes." Bray whistled. "That'll put the cat among the pigeons."

"Silver'll be furious." A thin and unpleasant smile took over Archer's face. "It's not down to us though. We don't have anybody near the hotel today. Not officially, anyway."

"Nobody else has explosives - and that can't have been an accident. Can it?" Ryan knew about explosions, but he didn't know a great deal about electricity generators. Bray shook his head.

"No, I don't think so. I can't see the Furies caring even if it was. We better double the guard."

"No need. They don't know where we are." Archer was grinning broadly now. "Bloody hell. This is going to wind them up no end. Looks like the false war is over."

"You think?" Ryan wasn't entirely sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he did know that fighting was something at which he was very good indeed; and it was nice to put such skills to good use. Archer went back into the building, and emerged again a second later with a hefty rifle slung over one shoulder.

"Yeah, I think," he said, in belated answer to Ryan. "We've been playing at this long enough, and everybody's been looking for a way to make things escalate." He looked towards Bray, with a certain measure of disgust. "Or most of us have, anyway. We just couldn't seem to make it happen. Now? Fun time. Grab a gun each. Get out on the streets."

"Sure." Ryan hurried off to do his bidding, more eager than he had thought he would be. Bray didn't move.

"Tribe Fury are going to be angry as hell," he pointed out. "There's going to be no more stand-offs. No more shooting at each other as you hide in the rubble."

Archer nodded. "That's just what I've been saying. Escalation. When I find out who blew up that generator, I'm going to start handing out medals. We're going to war, Bray. For real this time. So grab a gun."

"I don't think so." Bray could no longer take his eyes from the fading sight of the explosion. "You can't go out there anticipating a fight. You'll only make matters worse."

"Worse? Or better? Bray, once Silver and his lot realise what just happened, they're going to come blasting their way through the streets looking for us. Hell, we should have thought to do this earlier. So don't tell me not to go out there anticipating a fight. No need to anticipate. Not anymore." He grinned hugely. "Think about it. Then grab a gun, and come on out. You never know - you might find you enjoy it."

"Not any time soon. Not on your say so." Bray turned and left, striding away across the weeds and cracked tarmac, in search of some hidden place amongst the buildings. He needed to think, or thought that he did. In truth there was little to think about. He had always known that this would happen. You couldn't hope to split Tribe Fury into two opposing factions without all out war being the result in the end. It was just that it had been taking so long to happen, he had begun to think that they might be forever reduced to pointless exchanges of gunfire. Not that it would accomplish anything if they were. At least with a war there would eventually be a winner. At least with a war things would be moving again. At least with a war... But he couldn't feel positive about it. This might be what he had always known would happen, but that didn't mean that he had to be happy about it. He had fought many wars since the end of the old world. Street wars, gang wars, civil wars - from the small scale skirmishes of early territorial divisions, to the full scale battles between the Locos and the Demon Dogs that had laid waste to so much of the sector he had tried to call home. None of them ever really seemed to accomplish anything, except more rubble, more burnt out buildings. More dead bodies to be cleared away by somebody, before diseases could begin to spread. He didn't want another war, no matter how much he wanted to be rid of Tribe Fury. He didn't want any more death.

"Penny for them?" It was the same question that Ebony had asked him the previous day, but this time it came from a voice with none of Ebony's genuine care and interest. Bray didn't look up. The last thing he wanted to have to deal with right now was another head to head with Racha. He knew from experience that the rebel leader wouldn't take silence as a deterrent though. Sure enough, sharp footsteps clicked closer.

"I could almost believe that you didn't want to talk to me, Bray." A hint of flirtation, as always. A hint of warning, as usual. "I've sounded the alert. Even your friend Salene is standing out front with a gun in her hand. Is there some reason why you're not with her?"

"More sense?" Bray looked up, the sight of the sparkling black eyes just about enough to turn his stomach. Racha smiled at him.

"More sense than what? More sense than to want an end to all of this? You really want this fight to go on forever?"

"You know what I want." Bray looked away, finding a wall of faintly lewd graffiti infinitely more enjoyable a sight than Racha. "It doesn't involve shooting people."

"It might have to." Racha reached out, dropping his hands lightly onto Bray's shoulders, and laughing gently at the way the shoulders tensed in response. "Get a gun, Bray. Stand to with the others. That's an order. I don't know who decided to get this ball rolling again, but whoever it was has started something I don't plan to miss out on. Silver is going to bring my colleagues out against me, and I'm going to have everybody who can hold a gun out there ready to meet the assault. Everybody. You can sit here and mope when Silver is dead."

"And you're ruler of the city?" Bray's voice dripped with bitterness, but Racha, as ever, responded as though he had been given a charming compliment.

"We'll celebrate that day when we get to it. But unless you'd rather the city went to Silver, with him building himself a palace on top of the bodies of most of the people you know, you'll get in line with the others. Who knows? If I think you're behaving yourself, I might even give you and your friends guns that are actually loaded."

"If there's any justice in the world, you'll be the first casualty of this war." Bray pulled away from the pressing hands, and started off back to headquarters. Racha laughed at him.

"There's no justice in this world, Bray. Nothing except what you write yourself. I'll show you one day, when the city's mine. You can watch me create a new kind of justice."

"No thanks." Bray quickened his step, though he knew that it wouldn't be enough to lose him his grinning shadow. Sure enough, he heard the gentle laughter all the way back to the others. If there's any justice in the world... he thought again, but he had no more faith in such justice this time than he had had that brief moment before. Racha was right; there was no justice; not anymore. If it had ever existed at all, it had died with the last of the adults. Just like everything else.

Chapter Text

After the electricity generator exploded, it did not take long before the rest of the city followed suit. Tribe Fury were furious, and just as Archer had predicted, they didn't care who was responsible - they assumed that their former cohorts had done it, and acted accordingly. Gone was the half-hearted fighting between former comrades who did not really want to hurt each other; instead everything very quickly went mad. There were no more lethargic exchanges of bullets during pointless stand-offs. No more shouting instead of shooting. The breakaway gang found out the hard way about the change of heart, when a pair of guards found themselves under attack, not with sniper bullets fired over their heads, but with a fire bomb that nearly set them both alight. After that it was a bloodthirsty free-for-all, and it got worse by the day

Ryan seemed to be enjoying himself, though Salene had her doubts when she lay beside him at night, and heard him muttering as he slept. In the end the fighting got to be so heavy that they no longer took such breaks for sleep, and instead caught what they could at their posts; but in those first few skirmishes she worried for him at night. Later she had to worry all the time, and that kept her awake even when the gunfire did not. Their enemy seemed to have an almost inexhaustible supply of grenades, too, and the sound of explosions, of various sizes, was another deterrent for sleep. The air soon filled with dust, walls weakened and became unsafe; the ground cracked and shook. There were firebombs as well, appearing almost out of nowhere without warning, exploding in a rush of flame that ate anything in its path. Bray turned his energies to fire-fighting, rather than fighting for real, and it was almost a full time job. Running here and there armed with buckets of sand, singed by the heat and often choking on the smoke and the up-flung debris. It was a terrible job, but it was better than shooting at people, at least as far as he could see. Shooting at anonymous targets, never knowing whether you were killing or maiming; never knowing who you were killing or maiming. It wasn't for him, although Racha and Archer never ceased to try to get him involved. Always handing him guns, trying to egg him on. Salene they left alone, and she was thankful for it, trying to keep out of everybody's way. As for Ebony, she didn't seem to care one way or the other. She would fire if necessary, or avoid it if she felt like it; moving about from choice position in the front ranks to fairly safe niches at the back of the troops; alternately giving it her all and determinedly looking after herself. She was a good shot, but as ever she had her own agenda. It was if the war was something she wanted a part of only when she felt in need of the entertainment., and the rest of the time she was happy to let it carry on without her.

They saw each other less often now that everything had gone so mad. Ryan always seemed to be where the fighting was at its thickest; Ebony was often positioned likewise, when she wasn't trying to drape herself over Bray, or amuse herself by flirting with the almost pathologically disinterested Archer. Salene was usually at the rear, trying to administer some kind of first aid when she was allowed to; more often just trying not to see what was going on. She wasn't alone in that. There were plenty of them who had never imagined just how fierce and bloody a fight could be; who had seen fighting in the days of the Locos, and the Chosen, but usually only with sticks and fists. Most of them had never seen a war involving guns before; involving bombs and fires, that killed without warning. It was all so messy. So noisy and brutal. And when the tanks rolled in; then it all got crazier still.

They were all together one day, on perhaps the third day, or the fourth, since the attack on the electricity generator. Nobody was sure how much time had passed anymore; not really. There was still night and day to mark the passage of time of course, but nobody was paying much attention to them. There were fewer and fewer breaks for food, fewer and fewer breaks for sleep. Nothing had any regularity anymore; there was no way of keeping time. Everything was just a rush of noise and chaos. Bray was standing watch with a pair of binoculars, looking out for tanks and incoming firebombs, Ryan was doing his best to pick off the snipers who were trying sporadically to pick off them, and Salene just wanted to be as close to him as she could. She had been given a gun, but she preferred not to use it. Salene was no coward, but neither was she a killer, and that was something that she was hoping would never change.

"Quite a turn up for the books, isn't it." Sprawled on the ground, where she was trying to get some rest, Ebony watched the distant sight of tracer fire. "And you lot used to think you were bringing peace to this city."

"We nearly did," Ryan told her. She nodded.

"Yeah. I just think that the city had other ideas." A new volley of bullets from somewhere took a sizeable chunk out of a wall close to her head, and she moved aside without obvious alarm. "I didn't know there were this many bullets in the world."

"At least nobody's making any more," commented Bray. Ebony smiled.

"You hope. Any sign of more tanks?"

"No. I think they've pulled back. They're probably using them to keep the streets clear."

"Good. We had enough to worry about without more tank attacks." Salene still worried that their enemy might be intending to use aircraft against them, and her eyes kept drifting to the skies, in search of planes and helicopters. An aerial bombing attack really would mean the end for them. She shivered involuntarily. "I can't believe how bad everything's got."

"It was always going to go this way." Ebony was in a bitingly sarcastic mood. "It's a war, Salene. When Racha said he wanted to fight Silver, what did you think he was offering us? A really ferocious chess tournament?"

"I knew there was going to be fighting. I just never imagined how much. Don't tell me you're not bothered by all of this?"

"Maybe." Ebony shrugged. "But the difference between us, Salene, is that you care about everybody who's getting shot. I don't. There are very few people that I care about, and I couldn't care less what happens to the rest of this lot. Let them shoot each other. Let them blow each other up. It's got to be good for us. Right?"

"Not necessarily. There are more of them in the main Fury force." Bray lowered the binoculars for a while to look over at her. "If they kill all of Racha's people we're no better off. Silver still wants us hung, drawn and quartered, remember?"

"Fair point." Ebony shrugged. "Still, I can't say I'm sorry when another little Fury keels over, whichever side of this they're on. Whoever blew up that electricity generator was probably thinking the same thing."

"Whoever blew it up wasn't thinking at all. Or if they were, they weren't thinking about the good of the city. Setting all of this in motion was insane." Bray took a swift sip of warm water from the canteen that hung over his shoulder. It tasted of the soot that covered him from his intermittent attempts to play fireman, but it was better than being thirsty all of the time; not that any of them had enough water to really prevent that. He was hungry too, but food was harder to come by. None of them had eaten at all in the last twenty-four hours.

"Who do you think it was?" asked Salene. Bray shrugged.

"Racha swears none of his lot did it. I don't believe a word he says most of the time, but if he's telling the truth this time, I don't know. Lex maybe?"

"Lex doesn't have that kind of explosives," pointed out Ryan. "Anyway, if he had them, he wouldn't have gone for the generator. He'd have gone for the hotel. Either that or he'd have saved it up for smaller attacks on the tanks. That's the way Lex works."

"True." Bray shrugged. "Who then? You think there's more than one independent resistance movement?"

"I don't know who else is out there. Not anymore." Ebony sat up, reaching for her gun. "But I don't think there can be that many gangs. There just aren't that many Independents to go around. Don't forget that Racha has swallowed up a fair number of them into our little family here, and if the rumours we've been hearing about the size of Lex's forces are true, anybody else trying to recruit locals won't be getting very far."

"Yeah. And goodness knows Lex himself doesn't have that much support." Bray lowered the binoculars again, and this time threw them aside. His eyes were beginning to throb. "I wish we could do more to help him."

"Here he goes again." Ebony smiled up at him. "Bray, Lex has to fight his own battles. You can't do it for him."

"And you certainly can't go off and join him," added Ryan. "I don't know what's going on between you and Racha, but if you walk out of here, he won't stop until he's got you. Or shot you."

"Yeah. One or the other." Bray pulled Ebony to her feet. "Anyway, if I'm going to run off to find somebody, it's not going to be Lex. I just want to help him out, that's all. Wouldn't you rather he won than Silver or Racha?"

"It's not going to happen," Ryan put a temporary end to the conversation with another volley of gunfire, then looked back at the others. "He's got nothing to fight with."

"But there's a cache of arms hidden somewhere in this city," pointed out Bray. Ebony sighed.

"This again. Bray, if those arms were here, somebody would have found them by now. Between us we all took this city apart when the adults died. The looting, the vandalism - everything of value was taken. Face it, the guns are just an urban myth."

"Not necessarily. Remember the secret facility on Hope Island. Nobody had got in there, had they. There are other places like that, here and there. Places that nobody found, or that nobody could get into. Places that didn't seem to have anything worth taking, and got left alone. We found a bunch of them when we went looking for the Antidote, before you joined us, Ebony. And later, when we came back from Eagle Mountain and went looking again. All kinds of places."

"Which, like you said yourself, we already looked in. And no guns, remember? Bray we turned those places upside down looking for anything we could make use of. And we didn't find anything."

"Maybe." He was still looking at her, determination in his eyes. "But those guns are somewhere. It makes sense that there'd have been some. Why train up a youth army to defend the city, and then not give them anything to fight with?" He broke off at the sound of several explosions, but they were far enough away not to be a threat. A few bullets peppered the ground, but they seemed to be shots that had been aimed at the main body of fighters, and which had merely overshot their mark. Nothing to be immediately concerned by. Salene wished that Ryan wouldn't fire back with such enthusiasm.

"You're really sure about these guns, aren't you?" she asked. Bray nodded.

"You can call it wishful thinking. Maybe it is. But when this is over, both sides are bound to be depleted. Lex might have a chance, no matter how few people he's got in comparison, if he can come out against a war weary enemy with a good stock of weapons of his own. If all of his people have a gun each, he'll have a much better chance than he does at the moment. I think it's something worth considering. We can't steal him the guns that Racha has stockpiled, we're too well watched for that, and we don't really have any way of getting them to him anyway. But if we can find those hidden guns..."

"How? We can't exactly go and look. We can't tell him to either. He can't go hunting around the city when there's tanks all over the place and a bloody war being fought all over." Ebony sighed. "Look Bray, just change the record okay? All you've talked about since Ryan first mentioned the things are those guns. Every time I see you you're thinking about some new possible hiding place, and every time it gets shot down in flames. Face it, if there were any guns hidden in any of these places, somebody would have found them. Now stop thinking about might be's, and start thinking about the here and now. We've got a war to fight, whatever you think of it. Shoot straight and stop being an idiot. At least this way we might have a chance of getting something for ourselves out of all of this. Racha might start thinking of us as allies; and then, if he wins, we'll be in a good position. Isn't that better than throwing everything away on half-baked plans that aren't going anywhere?"

"Boy, you don't let up, do you." Bray had to break off again, this time as the ground shook violently under their feet. The sound of gunfire drowned out even the explosions for several teeth-clenching minutes. When it was over again he snatched Ebony's gun, and threw it as far as he could.

"You think anything we win for Racha with these is ever going to do any of us any good? Racha is crazy. You must be able to see that? Really crazy. If he wins this war it won't be to create the sort of city that'll be good for anybody, and he certainly won't be giving us any breaks, or giving us any rewards for helping him to victory. We'll be lucky if he doesn't kill us all once he's run out of ways of playing with us."

"He does seem pretty weird," commented Ryan. "Like he's in another world half of the time. I don't trust him. And they're all Tribe Fury anyway, right? So whoever wins, we're not going to be better off."

"Exactly." Bray watched dispassionately as Ebony went off to retrieve her gun. "The only people who can be trusted to run this city are us. Not Silver or Racha. And the only way--" He broke off, but this time there were no sudden explosions to force him into silence. Ebony raised an eyebrow.

"You finally realised that nobody's listening to you?"

"We're listening to him," said Salene with annoyance, although Ryan rather cancelled out her claim by interrupting to shoot at the enemy instead of taking the time to agree with her. Ebony smiled.

"Sure you are, Salene. And when it comes to the battle, you're going to be a really useful soldier for Bray to have fighting on his side."

"Leave it out, Ebony." Bray had begun to pace, apparently oblivious to the target he presented to snipers. Smoke drifted after him as he walked, showing that another firebomb had landed somewhere, but either he didn't notice it, or didn't care enough to set about his self appointed task of fighting the flames. "I stopped because I had an idea." He smiled around at them all. "I think I know where those guns are."

"Oh no..." Groaning loudly, Ebony shook her head. "Bray, I should just shoot you now and do us all a favour. Cut out the middle man. Will you please start thinking about something else? We have to worry about staying alive to the end of this fight - and that's more important than what Lex can or can't do. Let him fight his own battles."

"He can't do that without weapons." Bray snatched away her gun once again, this time upending it to draw in the soot and the dust at his feet. "Look. This is the Mall, right?" He drew a box. "And this is the main road out front... here's the docks, and the hotel, and the old library... You see?"

"Yeah, we all did geography." Ebony glanced over at Ryan. "Well, some of us did. What are you getting at?"

"What's this building here?" He pointed to a square that he had just drawn, some way out from the others on his map. Ebony shrugged.

"Can't really tell. The old hospital?"

"Or that meat packing place?" asked Ryan. Bray shook his head.

"No. You don't know what it is, and you wouldn't even if you were there. Because it isn't anything."

"Oh, well that's helpful then," muttered Ebony. Salene glared at her.

"Shut up," she snapped. "Go on, Bray."

"It isn't anything, because that's what it's designed to look like. Just a big empty building, but with a secret place that nobody knows about. And I mean, nobody. When I found it by chance, just after we got back from Eagle Mountain, it hadn't been touched by anybody. You'd have thought there hadn't been any trouble out on the streets, to see the way it looked inside."

"The place where you met Danni?" Salene spoke gently, not sure quite how he felt about that, or about hearing his old girlfriend's name. He nodded, looking a little distant.

"The place where I met Danni. A secret room, designed by her father. His secret room; and he was a part of the administration at the end. He designed the Virus, remember? Part of some military thing. Well if you had to hide a secret armoury, where would you hide it? In some obvious place, or even some non-obvious place, where you risk anybody finding it - or in a secret room you could be almost one hundred percent sure nobody would ever find? And nobody did find it."

"You did," pointed out Ryan. Bray nodded.

"Only because I was specifically looking. Because I was looking for information on the Antidote, and the Virus, and I was looking for some kind of secret place where that kind of information might be kept. You think vandals and looters and mad gangs of kids were being that cerebral? If Danni's dad was important enough to have had a place like that, and to have been involved in the Virus project to start off with, he might just be the kind of person who'd be involved in an attempt to hold on to civilisation after everything started to go crazy. He'd certainly know before anybody else that there weren't going to be many survivors. Right?"

"Right." Ebony was sounding interested now. "That does actually make sense."

"I know it does. If he and his friends knew that the Virus had got out, they'd know that there probably wouldn't be many of them left once it was all over. They'd be hoping that the worse case scenario wouldn't be as bad as it turned out to be, but they'd know that special arrangements would have to be made. I think he, or at the very least somebody he knew, would have been involved in setting up the child army. And his secret annexe is the place where an arms cache would be safe. I say that's where they are."

"Only one way to find out," pointed out Ryan. Bray nodded.

"Yeah. But how are we going to get to them?"

"We aren't," Ebony told him. "You even try to get away, and if Racha doesn't kill you it'll only be because Silver's people have beaten him to it." The ground shook again, more violently this time. "That's always supposing we survive long enough to think about going to look for them, anyway."

"That makes us all feel a lot better." Salene snatched up another ammunition clip for Ryan's rifle when he began to eject the empty one, handing it up to him as though it was something she had been doing for years. Ebony smiled sardonically.

"Oh we've got every chance of surviving, Salene. I'm sure we have. We're the world's most likely band of fighters, after all."

"There's no need for that." Bray handed her back her gun, proving her point by his apparent inability to get rid of it fast enough. Bray might be a talented hand to hand fighter, and he knew where he was with any number of less explosive weapons, but guns were definitely not his thing. Killing in general wasn't, which of course was exactly what Ebony had meant.

"So what do we do?" asked Ryan. Bray shrugged.

"Try to get a message to Lex somehow."

"And you know where he is? You know somebody we can trust to get the message delivered?" Ebony shook her head. "I don't think so. Maybe if the fighting wasn't going on one of us would get the chance to get away, but there hasn't been a let up in days. You're needed here. You might not like this fight, but we need every man, even if you are just fighting fires and watching out for tanks. You leave and it might be one of us who pays the price."

"I know that." He rubbed a hand across his face, obviously tired. They were all tired. "Maybe something will turn up. Maybe Lex will come out this way."

"And maybe you're wrong, and you don't know where those guns are at all." Ebony shouldered her rifle. "I'm going up the front. The more Racha sees us getting into the thick of things, the better. I'm sorry, Bray. In the absence of anything better, I'm going to keep looking like a loyal little recruit. For the time being, Racha is the guy in charge; and if there's one thing I've learnt dealing with gang leaders and megalomaniacs, it's that you stay on the right side of them. I'll be back this way later." She headed off, using a lithe, crouched gait that made her look as though she had run through such war zones all her life. Bray stared after her, feeling somewhat abandoned. Ebony might be a pain in the neck, but she was the best friend that he had right now, and if she didn't side with him, he wasn't sure where that left his hopes and plans. He couldn't really turn his back on the idea of finding the resistance some weapons though, could he? He couldn't really hope, as apparently she did, that Racha might turn out to be a benevolent - or, at the very least, not too wildly sadistic - ruler? A violent explosion prevented him from thinking about it any further. There were shouts now; flames that he could see, leaping up in the near distance. To hell with it all. Lex was a thought for another day. Grabbing up one of the buckets of sand that were kept about the place for just this purpose, he ran off into the thick of the chaos. Already there were more gunshots; as though some new high point had been reached in the fighting. Already, with that one burst of fire, it was as though everything had gone into overdrive. He felt flame on his face, and almost welcomed the temporary end to rational thought that it heralded. The ground shook under his feet, and another fire burst into life just in front of him. Somebody was shouting something about tanks. Somebody else was screaming, and nearby a wall began to tumble. It looked as if the stakes had been raised yet again. Whoever had blown up that electricity generator, Bray hoped that they were pleased with the outcome. Always supposing they hadn't blown themselves up alongside everything else.

Chapter Text

It was on the seventh day of the battle that Amber began to crumble. The noise of the fighting had kept them all awake for several days without respite; they hadn't eaten in two. They hadn't been able to travel for the last couple of days, for fear of being caught up in the fighting, so they spent the time holed up in what seemed to have once been a travel agency. It was a modern building, thin-walled, with a brilliant blue carpet on the floor, and posters on the walls that shouted of sun and fun and exhilaration. White water canoe trips; windsurfing on great lakes; pony trekking along South American mountains. KC and Chloe played Anywhere But Here, inspired by the posters, until Amber barked them into silence. They weren't anywhere - they were stuck here. Freezing cold, hungry, scared - and bored. Fear shouldn't be so boring, really, or at least so Amber thought - but it was. Huddling in an office, unable to go out, unable to do anything to relieve the tedium, all made their lives very boring indeed.

Sasha sang to them at first, quietly; but soon the atmosphere lulled even him into silence. Michaels sat behind an old upturned desk, and muttered to himself under his breath - snatches of old army training mantras, as far as Amber could hear, mixed up with old prayers learnt in school, or perhaps from his parents. His eyes were closed most of the time, and his hands gripped part of an old broom handle, just as though he thought he was holding a gun.

And by that seventh day, when rain was pounding on the thin walls, and leaking through the broken panes of glass in the door; when the wind was howling, and hurling litter through the air with childish fury; when the thunder, half-hearted in comparison, failed to drown out the sounds of the people fighting and dying far too close by - Amber began to feel that she was going mad. Eden was crying, as he had been crying for almost a day without a break. She had tried everything she could think of, but nothing would make him stop. It grated on her nerves, invaded her conscious and her unconscious; played upon her senses. With the sleep deprivation and the hunger, it all became worse still, and the tiny cries seemed to grow in volume just to spite her. Sasha tried pacing with the child, singing softly to it, but the thunder and the wind, and the hammering of the rain, not to mention the unease of its mother, all left the baby fractious and tearful. KC and Chloe talked quietly in low voices, bothered by the change that seemed to be coming over Amber. She no longer seemed to be herself. KC blamed Bray for going missing, Chloe blamed Eden, or wanted to. Whatever the cause, all of Amber's usual resilience seemed to have deserted her. Not that any of them felt especially resilient by then.

By nightfall, when KC and Chloe were trying to sleep, dozing fitfully between the louder explosions, and Michaels' constant muttering had faded into silence, Sasha sat down beside Amber, and laid Eden down between them, in his customary place. He had stopped crying at last, though it seemed unlikely to last. Amber was sure that he was hungry, but she no longer felt capable of giving him all that he needed.

"What's wrong?" Sasha had been avoiding too close contact in recent days, since Amber had so convinced herself that Bray was dead. It didn't seem right to try to get close to somebody suffering from a bereavement. Now though, knowing that it was what she needed, he slipped an arm around her shoulder and eased her closer to him. She closed her eyes.

"Everything," she said at last. "Everything. Sasha... if I don't eat soon, where will the milk come from? I can't produce any if I don't eat. But we can't go hunting for it now, it would be suicide. I used to think that I was so brave, but now... It's like every risk I took before, and every brave thing I did, doesn't count for anything anymore, because it was only my own life that I was risking then. Now it's him too. Eden. He means everything, Sasha. Everything. I can't take risks anymore, because I can't risk him. Every time I feel scared it feels a hundred times worse, because I'm afraid for him. I'm worried for him. I'm afraid for his next meal, about how I'm going to raise him when we're stuck out here on our own, with all this fighting going on. Before, when Trudy had her baby, we were safe in the Mall, and there weren't all these guns and bombs and tanks. We had food, even if it was just a little. But it didn't matter so much then anyway. I care for Brady, especially since she's Bray's niece. Eden's cousin. But she's not my baby, so I couldn't ever worry so much about her." She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. "And I sort of wish that he'd never been born, because I don't feel like I know who I am anymore. And I want to be like I was before. It was all so much easier then."

"Easier?" He stroked her hair gently. "Really?"

"Different. Easier. I don't know." She opened her eyes, and very, very gently stroked Eden's hair, just as Sasha was stroking hers. "Strange, isn't it. I didn't want a baby. I talked... about trying to find a way of getting rid of him, when I first realised I was pregnant. I didn't think this was any world to have a child in. It was Bray who wanted him, although I think he was even more scared by the idea than I was. And now I have our baby, but I don't have Bray, and in a way I still feel that everything will be alright. Just as long as I can keep Eden safe."

"We will."

"Will we? How? Tomorrow we'll have to find food. We can't go any longer without it or we'll be in no shape for anything. We're tired, and we can't move very fast, and we don't know where to look. There are fighters everywhere, and I doubt we'll get very far without being seen. I never thought of myself as the pessimistic type, and I'm certainly no defeatist. But you tell me how we're going to keep Eden safe. We can't keep ourselves safe. We're trapped, Sasha."

"Never say die." He smiled at her, but she had eyes only for Eden. He heard the strain in her voice when she answered him.

"I'm not saying die. But I think I might be saying surrender."

"Surrender? Amber... no. You're not the type to throw in with Tribe Fury. They're the opposite of everything that means anything to you."

"Right now the only thing that means anything to me is Eden. We're not that far from the Fury ranks. We can't be - listen to how loud the fighting is. If I thought we could reach the Mall... But you know as well as I do that we can't. Certainly not with Eden. But we can make it to the Furies, if we walk out there and show ourselves, and tell them what we want."

"They'd shoot first and ask questions later. It's what they do."

"No. That's what they do to the ones they find trying to hide from them. It's what they'd do if they caught us out looking for food, or trying to find a better place to hide, and I'm not risking that. Not with Eden. But if we walk over to them, plain as day, they'll take us in. We know they're recruiting. It's what they've been doing since they first came to the city; the refugees we met outside told us that."

"You really think they'd take us in, and not just shoot us on the spot?"

"Probably." She frowned. "You know, when I said 'we', I meant Eden and I. I'd never ask anybody else to share this with me. I know how much your freedom means to you."

"And I know how much yours means to you. I won't leave you, Amber. I promised I'd look after you and the baby, and I meant it. If you go ahead with this, I'm going with you. All the way."

"I couldn't ever ask you to do that."

"You're not asking." He looked towards the other three, all apparently now dead to the world. "What about them?"

"They're not coming. They don't need to. They're alright out here on their own, and they'll get by okay without us. Better without us and the baby getting in the way. KC will get them out of here safely." She shrugged. "Besides, they'd never agree to come; and Michaels couldn't anyway."

"I guess all that makes a certain sense." Sasha was silent for a few moments more, then let his eyes drift over to the door. The rain seemed to be letting up, and the wind wasn't as strong as before. "When were you thinking of going?"

"Soon. Before I can change my mind."

"You don't think that changing your mind might be a good thing? If you're having second thoughts..."

"Second thoughts? I'm having twentieth thoughts. Two hundredth thoughts. I just don't see any alternatives. If it weren't for Eden... But I'm not going to wish him away. I just have to accept that I have different priorities now, that's all."

"And so do I." He smiled. "Feels good, doesn't it."

"Strangely enough, yes. Having Eden is the weirdest thing, and the scariest, but it does fell good. That's why I know I'm doing the right thing."

"Yeah. Maybe. So... do you want to say goodbye?"

"To the others? Yes, of course. But no. They'd only try to stop us, or come with us, and I don't want that. Best just to leave." She picked up Eden very carefully. "Is that being unfair?"

"Not necessarily. You're right, they would try to stop us."

"Good." She stood up. "Last chance to back out then."

"I'm not leaving you to do this alone. No way. If you're going, I'm going. The only question is whether life in Tribe Fury is really what you want for your son."

"Life in Tribe Fury is better than no life at all." She smiled down at the now peacefully sleeping child. "I'd have chosen death first for myself, but... he's my son. How can I choose anything except life?"

"That's good enough for me." He picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. "How much stuff do you want to take?"

"I won't need anything. Not where we're going. You must bring your things of course. Your instruments are important. But nothing else is going to matter anymore."

"If you say so." As quietly as he could, he crossed to the door and eased it open. Fortunately the wind was no longer so loud that they risked waking the others by letting it in. Amber slipped though the crack, and Sasha followed after. His tambourine jangled as he went, but the three children showed no sign of having heard. With a last look around at them, Sasha hurried off after the little family that he now thought of as his own.

Back in the travel agent's, Chloe and Michaels slept on, oblivious to all that had happened - but KC had been awake for a while. He didn't know what had awakened him, and he wasn't sure how much of Amber and Sasha's conversation he had heard; but he had heard enough. Now he was staring at the door in shock, unable to believe what had just been decided. Surely Amber wasn't fool enough to think that her life could ever be better under Tribe Fury? He had no idea how it must feel to have a child, but it seemed insane to throw so much away out of fear for the baby's future. Making a decision, he jumped to his feet and hurried to the door, slipping out quietly into the street. Outside it was pitch black, a thick layer of cloud obliterating the moon and the stars. An occasional flash of light from the fighting illuminated the street in brief fits, but he could see no sign of Amber and Sasha even when the world was at its brief brightest. It was as if they had disappeared.

"Left or right. Left or right?" He didn't know. How could he? But if he was really to try to persuade them to change their minds, he had to choose one or the other. After a moment's further hesitation he ran off to the left, dodging from cover to cover as best he could. A burst of mortar fire lit up the road behind him, but he was set on his course by then, and had no way of knowing that the flash had momentarily picked out Amber and Sasha, scurrying anxiously along the street. They had turned right out of the travel agent's, and they were getting further away from him at every step. KC hardly had time to think about them anyway. After hiding for several days he had had no idea how bad the fighting had become, and he realised now that he was going to have to work hard just to stay alive. Another explosion rocked the ground, and he almost fell, but he knew that he had to stay on his feet. Had to keep moving. Had to keep fixed on the road up ahead. Every other thought had been driven almost instantly from his mind; every other thought except one. In the madness of that dark, bewildering run, he found that he understood at last why Michaels was the way that he was. Why he was so afraid of the idea of war. It made perfect sense to him now.

Chapter Text

Bray was off to one side of the fighting, manning the east front in case of a sneak attack, which had been Archer's idea. He had no faith in the likelihood of Bray actually firing at anyone, give the persuasion required merely to make him carry a gun, and with that in mind he and Salene had been left with a gang of nervous new recruits in a place where they were required only to shoot on occasions, in an effort to discourage any advance. Whilst the main body of Racha's forces traded bullets with the enemy for real, as well as grenades and the occasional brick, Bray and Salene didn't find any great need to fire at anybody. They couldn't lay claim to boredom though, for the grenades directed at the front line came their way almost as often as not, and more than one fire bomb spread flames that had to be fought. Bray manned the fire fighting equipment - little more than sand from a number of bags, along with one rusting fire extinguisher. Salene surprised herself with her own determination, trying to stir the younger kids from their almost paralytic nervousness in order to work out some kind of early warning alert for incoming bombs. The ground seemed to shake almost constantly, and the explosions and gunfire both close by and further away, only sporadically drowned out the fearful whimpering of volunteers who had never really known what they were volunteering for. Salene didn't think she had ever seen a more dreadful time in her life than those days of battle; of sleeping in snatches and by rota, and of hardly eating at all. She didn't want to think what it must be like where the real fighting was going on; what it must be like for Ryan. She consoled herself with thoughts of how much he seemed to enjoy to fight, and of how enthusiastic he had been to get started. Better to think of things like that than to worry about what might happen. Not that there was a great deal of time to think. Her life was about action, and noise, and flames, and children crying when they thought no one was looking. She didn't think that things could possibly be worse - until the rains came, and she knew that the bad things had hardly begun.

The rain was torrential; the kind that bounced off the ground after it struck, and made the puddles foam on the surface. The kind that brought darkness to the world even in the middle of the day, let alone the night. The wind picked up almost as soon as the sun hid itself away behind the cloud, and soon much of the rain seemed to be travelling horizontally. It was hard to breathe, hard to see; but still the grenades came, and the gun shots sounded out all around them. Even the fire bombs still came, sometimes catching, other times fizzling out hopelessly. Some unseen assailant hurled a brick that dropped a boy standing at Salene's shoulder, and she was left trying to care for the unconscious child in an inch deep puddle, with rain obscuring her vision, and her hands frozen almost to the marrow. Another boy handed her random items from their already largely random first aid kit, and she wished that she knew what she was doing. Bray dragged over some pieces of litter to use as a shelter, but although it helped to keep the worst of the rain from her patient, still a fair amount of it seemed to be pouring onto his face. The puddles around his head were tinged with pink from the blood running from the wound left by the brick, and every so often he tried to fight off Salene's hands, whilst shouting at her and calling her 'dad'. She was almost glad when the slackening off of the rain brought more fire bombs, and something else to take up her attention. Watching out for airborne explosives might be frightening, and might be the forerunner of great injury and unpleasantness to follow, but it felt less immediately distressing than watching the unconscious boy gargling rainwater and mud.

"I think I've lost all feeling in my hands and feet." She was standing in yet another puddle, a rifle she wasn't entirely sure how to use cradled in her arms just for the reassurance of holding something. Of holding anything. Somebody nearby screamed a warning, and just as she had thought Bray had been about to answer her, they all had to duck behind cover again. A grenade exploded more or less harmlessly on the other side of a stout wall, though the ground still shook impressively. Bray reappeared, eyes smouldering like flames put out by the rain.

"I hate this," he growled. Salene wanted to believe that he meant the whole thing, but he seemed to mean being stuck where he was, on the periphery of it all. Perhaps he would rather have been where the others were, where the fighting was going on in earnest. Maybe then he could feel as though he were doing some good. She tried speaking to him, but he wasn't in the mood for chat.

A streak of tracer fire lit up the sky, and brought with it a renewed intensity to the gunfire. A fire bomb landed at Salene's feet, and although it failed to go off she was still shaking helplessly five minutes after Bray had thrown it away in rare fury. Suddenly she wanted to be the delirious boy lying on the ground muttering about his father. He might be at death's door for all she knew, but at least he didn't seem to know anything of what was going on. She told herself off for her nervousness - it wasn't as though it was a fraction as bad here as it was where Ryan must be stationed. She should be thankful that Archer had had such a low opinion of her abilities. Here there had been no fatalities as yet, but she knew that the same would not be true of the front. She just wished that she could be as brave as Ryan, and stop wishing herself into oblivion.

"Somebody's coming." Bray had materialised beside her again, although he didn't look much like himself. Soot and sand had been painted across his face by the rain, and from the middle of it all his eyes looked out as though from somebody else's face. Salene tried not to be distracted by the sight, and instead concentrated on following his line of sight.

"Enemy?" she asked. Bray shrugged.

"Hard to tell, isn't it. But probably."

"Everybody else is hiding," she mused. "If there is an 'everybody else' anymore. It seems as though the whole of the city is out here today."

"Far from it. This is a small battle. We don't even have half our own people out here, and Silver has a lot more dotted about in other places."

"I don't want to know how many more there are of them, thank you." She blinked into the fading rain, trying to see the person that Bray had spotted. "What do we do?"

"Always supposing nobody shoots him before he gets to us, we see what he wants."

"And if he opens fire, or is just trying to get close enough to throw a bomb?"

"I don't know. Shoot him I suppose." He picked up the gun he had put down in order to fight the fires, and turned it over in his hands. He looked as though he was trying to decide whether or not he would be able to fire it. Salene had her doubts, and hoped that they were right.

"I still can't see anything." A distant explosion made her flinch, before she realised that it was too far away to mean anything other than a faint trembling of the ground underfoot. Bray pointed, then lifted up his rifle and stepped forward. Several of the younger boys crowded after him, either anxious to prove themselves, or just wanting to stay close to the one member of the unit who didn't appear to be scared stiff. Salene could sympathise, if that was the cause. She didn't want Bray too far away from her either.

"Who's there?" Bray managed to make his voice sound authoritative, which was more than most of them could manage right now. He was pointing his gun at what Salene could now see to be a figure. Not a large one, but then size probably didn't matter much with the kind of weapons Tribe Fury had. Whoever it was, he heard the shout but perhaps didn't hear the individual words. He gave no answer, anyway, but kept on coming, a hurrying figure trying to keep to the shadows. Bray shouted again, and somewhere close by a shot rang out. Everybody ducked.

"Oh no." Salene brandished her own rifle, as though somehow that would serve as a deterrent to any snipers. Another shot rang out, and the small, hurrying figure began to hurry faster.

"Don't shoot!" he shouted, tripping over rubble and sliding about in all the rainwater as he ran. "I don't have a gun. I'm... I'm just looking for somebody. I'm not an Independent, honest!"

"KC?" Bray couldn't believe the voice that he was hearing, but in the darkness they were still too far apart to see faces. "KC, is that you?"

"Huh?" For a second the hurrying, stumbling figure halted, then with a sudden burst of speed ran on again. "Bray?!"

"Keep your voice down. You'll attract the snipers. Looks like a couple of them just moved in." Bray ran forward, meeting the smaller boy halfway and almost dragging him along. "What the hell are you doing out here? You're supposed to be safe in the Mall."

"And you're supposed to be dead!" KC pulled back for a moment, trying to let it all sink in. "Are you with Tribe Fury?"

"No. Yes." Bray grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him on to the others. A few bullets skimmed the tarmac by their feet, but the snipers apparently had no real skill. Perhaps Silver's forces had also been divided into capable fighters, and the hopeless type banished to the perimeter.

"I don't understand." Almost falling over the now comatose boy who had been hit by the brick earlier, KC skidded to a halt in a puddle. He looked cold and miserable, but the spark of life in his eyes was as hot as ever. "You're dead. Everybody knows you're dead. Or... we thought you were. The fight with the Locos, and Ebony. It was a massacre."

"Yes. It was pretty much." Bray pulled him under cover behind a wall that had broken in half earlier in the day. "But what about you? You were supposed to be back at the Mall."

"Change of plan. Lots of changes of plan. It's complicated."

"Very, by the sound of it. You said you weren't an Independent?"

"Yeah, to keep from getting my head shot off. I'm as independent as I ever was." KC spotted Salene and threw her a wave, but busy as she was in the vigil for incoming missiles, she didn't do anything more than wave back. "How about you? 'No. Yes,' wasn't that great an answer."

"It's complicated. Tribe Fury split. You knew that, right? Well I got roped into one side of it. I haven't decided yet if it beats being dead. I just keep wishing I was with Lex instead."

"Yeah. You and me both. Ever since the baby came we've been..." KC trailed off. "Bray, I--"

"Baby?" Bray was looking him up and down. "It hasn't been that long, KC. Not for you to..."

"It's not mine. I..." KC didn't know where to begin. "Bray, this is important. Have you seen anybody else coming this way tonight. Anybody?"

"You were the first. Why?"

"Then she must have gone the other way." KC closed his eyes for a moment. It struck him that he had a lot of important things to say, and that was something with which he was decidedly unfamiliar. "Look, I'm sorry, but I can't... I mean there's no easy way..." He grabbed hold of the wall for support as a grenade somewhere nearby made the earth shake, and showed him, for a moment, the earnest eyes amid the mask of filth. "Bray, you have a son. Chloe and I have been with Amber since just before he was born. I'm not sure how long ago exactly."

"Amber?" Beneath the sand and soot Bray had gone pale, although there was no way for anybody to know it. "Amber is near here? In the middle of all this?"

"No, not here. I'm here because I thought I was following her, but she must have gone the other way. She was at her wit's end, you know. Convinced you were dead, no food, no sleep since the fighting got bad. Scared for the baby all the time. I think it all got too much. She ran off a little while ago, with the baby. She was going to surrender." He stared up at the older boy, confused by the apparent lack of response. "Bray? You can't really blame her. She thought they'd have a better chance of survival, I think. I know I should have tried to stop her, but I just didn't know what to say."

"It's not your fault." Bray didn't hear himself speak the words, and wasn't really aware of the need to say them. "I... I have a son?"

"She called him Eden. It was supposed to signify building a better world than this one. Bray..."

"I have to get to them. She was going to the other side?"

"She must have gone that way. She had to head to one side of the fight or the other. She might not have--"

"They're not far away. How long have you been running?"

"Not long. I don't know. We were roughly halfway between your lot and theirs. Listen, I'm sorry. I thought I'd come after her. I must have gone in the wrong direction."

"Not your fault." Bray's voice was sounding increasingly thick, coloured by several very forceful emotions. "She's probably... They'd take her to the hotel though, right? I mean, that's where they've always processed recruits. The hotel."

"Right to the lion's den." KC felt faintly sick. "What are we going to do? Try to get a message to her? If she knew you're alive..."

"I've got to get after her. I've got to. I have to--" Bray wasn't sure what he had to do, or how exactly he was going to do it. He merely threw aside his rifle, and steered KC out of the way.

"Get back to the Mall," he advised. "I'd imagine it's still safe there. Things are going to get worse before they get better, and the next sniper you encounter might have had more target practice than the ones here tonight."

"Bray, you can't go to the hotel."

"I can go wherever I want." He hesitated, then retrieved the gun and handed it to KC. "Look after yourself. And wherever you'v been lately, forget it and go back to the Mall."

"I'm coming with you!"

"I'll move faster alone. Besides, I..." He frowned. "KC, can you do something for me?"

"Probably. I get around this city almost better than anyone. Always did."

"You're not as small as you used to be, you know. You should be careful." Bray fixed him with one of his most serious gazes. "Did you mean it when you said about wanting to join Lex? Do you think, if you really had to, you could find him?"

"Sure! There are all kinds of whispers in the streets that Tribe Fury never hear. Why? You want him to help you get Amber back?"

"No. I want him to keep fighting Tribe Fury. Both halves. Now listen. If you manage to find Lex, you have to tell him something from me, okay? Tell him to go to where I met Danni. He knows where it is. Tell him to take the place apart. Walls, furniture, floor, whatever. There's guns hidden there somewhere, I'm sure of it."

"Guns?" KC's eyes widened. Bray could see the next word coming from a mile away. "Cool! How many?"

"That's one thing we don't know. Just tell him it's what was stockpiled for him and his kind to use against the rest of us. And KC?"

"Yeah?"

"Do it fast."

"Sure." He offered the older boy an awkward smile. "It's been good to see you, Bray. I know we've had our difficulties..."

"No more than me and Lex." Bray clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm sorry I don't have any food for you, and I can't offer you much else either. If you want to stay here until it's light--"

"No." KC shook his head. "I have my own people to be getting back to. They're depending on me. I'll find Lex, as soon as I can."

"Don't get shot getting out of here."

"You either. I wouldn't fancy explaining that to Amber."

"I'm not getting shot until I've seen my son." Bray's eyes shone at that word. "Take care, KC." With that he was gone. A few bullets echoed his departure, but that was all. Salene hurried over not long after he had disappeared.

"Hi."

"Hey, Salene." This was quite a night for surprises. First someone he had thought dead, and now someone he had believed to be safely out of the city. "I didn't realise you'd come back."

"I got back just before Tribe Fury split. Trust me to walk into the middle of all of this. Ryan's here too." She frowned. "Don't think that I'm not pleased to see you, but where has Bray gone?"

"After Amber. To stop her from giving herself up to Tribe Fury." KC grinned. "I reckon he'll make it too. Knows almost every shortcut. Plus he's always been lucky."

"Amber? Giving herself up?" Salene couldn't imagine what would make the girl to something like that - until she remembered that Amber was expecting a baby. Salene had thrown in with the Chosen to protect her own unborn child. This was not really any different. "Still... he shouldn't have gone. If Racha finds out he'll kill him."

"If the fighting carries on like this nobody is going to be finding out anything about anyone." The boy smiled up at her. "I have to get going. It's been great seeing you. Tell Ryan I said hi."

"You're leaving?"

"Why not? It's no worse out there than it is here. Watch yourself, Salene. Don't forget you're not among friends." He almost hugged her, but didn't. When all was said and done, it wasn't really his style. "See you soon."

"I hope."

"Yeah." He smiled at her, the familiar childishness in his bright eyes. Then, just like Bray, he was gone. Salene almost didn't dare to watch as he ran, in case somebody saw him; in case somebody decided to send him on his way with a bullet or a grenade. She was still holding her breath long after he had gone out of sight.

Chapter Text

KC wasn't sure whether to find Lex first, or whether to go back to the others. He opted for the latter. Chloe was still asleep, but she woke up as he came in, and blinked about in surprise.

"Where is everyone? And where did you get that rifle?"

"They've gone." He sat down. "And never mind the gun. I have to find Lex."

"Huh? What?" Chloe was staring at him with eyes full of sleep and surprise. "KC...?"

"Forget about it, Chlo. There isn't time right now. Amber and Sasha aren't coming back, for a while at least. And I've been sent to find Lex. It's important."

"KC, I--"

"You have to find somewhere better to hide. A cellar would be best, but make sure you mark it so I know where you are. Leave a trail like I showed you. The fighting seems to be spilling this way, and I don't want them to find you. Now I have to go."

"Will you let me get a word in? You're not making any sense!" As he got to his feet she followed suit, and caught hold of his arm. "Where has Amber gone? And where's the baby?"

"With Amber of course. She was scared. She went away with Sasha. Bray went to get her back. I don't know if he'll make it or not. He asked me to find Lex, so I have to do that now. It's important. If Bray gets to Amber in time, it won't matter where she's gone, so I'll see you soon, okay?"

"Bray?" From the moment he had first mentioned the name he had seen the changes rush through her eyes. Shock, delight, disbelief. "You're really seen Bray?"

"Yes. He gave me the rifle. I know it's weird, and I'm sorry I left you here, but there wasn't any time, and I really don't have time to explain right now. I'll see you soon, Chlo. I'm sorry this is all so rushed, but I should do this as soon as I can, and I only came back to you first so that you didn't worry. I have to go now."

"Alright..." She didn't understand, and the confusion covered her whole face. Michaels hadn't spoken, but then Michaels was not often one for active participation. KC looked from one to the other of them.

"You'll find somewhere better to stay, right? But don't go looking for food, it's not safe. If I find Lex we can get something to eat from him. Okay?"

"Yeah. Okay." She was still looking confused; still looking like she wanted the full version of events rather than the truncated version she was stuck with. "KC, how are you planning to find Lex? Do you know where he is?"

"Not really. Thought I'd start with the Mall." He shrugged. "If it hadn't been for Amber having the baby, and us having to lay up all the time, we'd probably have gone back there by now anyway, so it's as good a place as any to start. If it doesn't work out I'll come back and find you and we'll... Look, I really have to go now." He smiled awkwardly. "I-- Goodbye." And preferring just to get it over with, he went, scurrying away like the street urchin he had always been. Chloe couldn't believe how big a wrench it was to see him go.

KC ran, without much thought of danger. There were two ways to do this, he reasoned; be ginger, and get nowhere, or be oblivious to the risks and run flat out. So long as he stayed away from the places where the fighting was worst, he felt that he should be okay, for the most part. He was afraid, but in many ways it felt good to be doing it; good to be doing what he had missed doing since the baby had been born. Amber had forbidden them all from doing anything that risked capture, partly on the grounds that an interrogation might lead the enemy to her baby. It seemed so hypocritical that she could then turn around and go straight to that enemy with the child. Not that there was any point in dwelling on such things now. He just ran, and fed on the adrenalin; and prayed that nobody saw him, or opened fire.

It seemed strange to be heading back to the Mall. To be in familiar streets, familiar hiding places - heading for a place for which he had headed so many times, and in so many different circumstances. After all that had happened it seemed stranger still. The streets were deserted, though he didn't believe that there was truly no one around, and he could see no sign of Fury roof guards. He padded on, slowed now, near to the end of his strength. Running was so much more exhausting when you were afraid. Up ahead even the dumpsters looked familiar. He had thought that they looked the same all over the city, but here there seemed to be a uniqueness; a friendliness; in the coloured sprawl of the overflowing litter. He went on, almost feeling warm thoughts of comradeship for the graffiti, for the familiar pattern of broken windows and crooked drain covers. He went more carefully then, anxious not to lose it all so close to the end. The snipers' bullets that had skimmed so close to his feet when he had met with Bray were the closest he had ever come to gunfire, and he had no desire to get any closer. Too many explosions were echoing inside his memory, and he didn't want to hear any more. Not now. Not, with preference, ever.

Nobody challenged him though. Nobody opened fire. The war, no matter how ghastly, apparently had its good points, even if there were people at the front paying for his current freedom of movement. Climbing through one of the new entrance-ways, chosen by himself half a lifetime ago, when Tribe Fury had been a new and unknown threat, he stared about at those so very familiar corridors. They were quiet, but then he hadn't been expecting a welcoming committee. He only hoped that the lack of one wasn't due to the absence of all of his friends.

He started in the lobby, then went to the canteen. Both were empty, although the canteen at least showed signs of having been used recently. He poured himself some water from one of the plastic storage tanks, and hunted out a couple of cheese crackers from a dusty tub. It bothered him that no alarms had gone off, though he supposed that the Mall was meant to appear derelict these days. He couldn't really remember how long he had been away, and so couldn't be sure just how much change he should expect.

"Hello?" He was dubious about whether he should call out, for he didn't know if the place was still in the hands of his friends. If they were hiding, though, he had to get them out somehow. One way or another he had to find out what was going on here. Where Lex was. He called again, and this time thought that he heard footsteps. Faint footsteps, and maybe a whisper. He swallowed hard. Ah well - he had wanted to find out if there was anybody around.

"It's me. KC. Lex? Tai-San? Jack?" He went to the top of the stairs. "Lex, I have to talk to you."

"Lex isn't here." The voice made him jump, and he whirled about in such shock that he almost fell down the stairs. Of all the voices he had expected to hear, that of an unknown, tiny child was the last. He gaped.

"Who the hell-?"

"I'm Megan." She was about six years old, and small for her age, with a pale face, large dark eyes, and very long black hair. Almost ethereal, somehow. Weird, like so many of the underfed children of the city. She was smiling though, and she didn't look hostile. He noticed that her eyes never left his borrowed gun. "Hello. Did you say you were called KC?"

"Yeah." He frowned, feeling somewhat confused. "Listen, I need to speak to Lex. It's important. Do you know who I mean?"

"I know Lex. He comes here sometimes. Mostly they live somewhere else though."

"Who does? Live where?" He advanced towards her. "Look, I don't know who you are or what you're doing here, but--"

"KC!" It was Trudy's voice, and it made him jump almost as much as had Megan. "KC!"

"Trudy." He received her hug with only mild embarrassment and impatience. "Hi."

"Hi? After all this time, disappearing without a word? Hi?!" She looked around. "Where's Chloe?"

"Safe. I need to speak to Lex."

"He's not here." Her eyes narrowed. "What's going on?"

"Stuff. Important stuff. I have a message for Lex from Bray, and--"

"Bray!" The delight on her face was like nothing he had ever seen before, and only then did he remember the relationship between the two of them. "You've spoken to him? Recently?"

"I was with him and Salene just a little while ago. They seemed okay. Bit frazzled maybe. Where is Lex?"

"Oh, I don't know what he does at night. Sabotage probably, and wishing he could do something as impressive as blowing up that electricity generator." She shrugged. "I don't know, I'm not a part of all of that. They left me here with all these kids to look after. I run a crèche, and that's the sum total of my involvement in fighting Tribe Fury." She sounded disgruntled, but she smiled again almost immediately. "You've really seen Bray? And he looked okay?"

"Yes... I think I said that already. Tired. Kinda filthy. He said he's got roped into the fighting. With the breakaway Furies? Some guy called Racha?"

"Yes. I know who Racha is. Of course, that was after you left. Strange sort. Likes to play games with people." She smiled gently. "Look, there's really no way of finding Lex. He'll come here when he comes here. Usually checks in to bring some food for the kids around dawn, but he doesn't often spend the night here anymore. None of them do really, except Jack. Sometimes Luke." She sounded lonely, he decided, though that was most definitely not his problem His only worry was Lex. He tried to tell her as much, but she quietened him.

"He'll be along. Jack is working on some new project, and Lex said he'd check in some time today to talk about it. In the meantime you look dreadful, KC. You might as well rest until he turns up."

"I'm supposed to be in a hurry." He looked so crestfallen that she had to laugh.

"He'll be along. Really. Remember the radio controlled helicopter, and how the camera on it let us see the hotel, when Ebony took Lex and Bray there? Well we've got a new one. One of Lex's new allies found it. Jack's redesigned it to carry more weight, and they're planning to use it to let us - them - see behind enemy lines. Lex was talking about dropping bombs with it, but Jack's refusing to try his hand at building anything that'll be small enough and still do damage." She looked distinctly relieved. "I can't say that I'm sorry."

"And you're sure that Lex will be here to talk about all of this?"

"You're starting to sound obsessed." She smiled, then gestured to little Megan. "Meg, go and make up an extra bed. You know where everything is."

"Okay." The girl ran off, her bare feet making tiny little slapping sounds on the hard floor. KC stared after her.

"Are there many of them?" he asked. Trudy frowned, then caught his meaning.

"Oh. In the crèche. About twenty-five. Everybody under ten from the tribes who've thrown in with us. With Lex. I try to teach them to read, but they just want to play at fighting Tribe Fury."

"I don't blame them. Reading never did anybody any good." KC smiled at her, feeling very old at the suggestion that it was only the under tens who were being kept out of the fighting. "I won't tell them that."

"Thank you. I think." She put an arm around his shoulders, and started to lead him to the rooms she had moved into with the children. There seemed no point in sending him off to his old room, when she was no longer even sure that there was anything left in it. So much had been taken by Lex and his people, or cannibalised by the children of the crèche. He didn't seem to be objecting. By now, despite his insistence on speaking to Lex, it was clear that he was all but asleep on his feet. He knew it himself, though he didn't believe that he would sleep - that he would ever be able to. Not until he had spoken to Lex, and passed on the message that Bray had thought so important. He was even more certain when he saw the crèche, and the children in it, and heard the noise that they were making. Megan was standing beside a bed that she had made for him; an excitably proud looking child beside a madcap heap of cushions, what seemed to be curtains, and several army greatcoats. It didn't look like a bed that anybody could sleep on, certainly not somebody determined not to sleep at all.

Needless to say, when Lex arrived an hour later, KC was dead to the world.

Chapter Text

Bray ran as he had never run before, until his head was swimming and his vision blurred; until his feet were numb and his legs no better. He cleared piles of rubble in giant leaps, pushed through empty buildings, battered doors, shuttered windows. Already exhausted from the struggle of the last few days back at his post, he didn't know how much energy he still had at his disposal - but he was determined to keep going for as long as he could. Amber's face, floating at the forefront of his mind, kept his feet moving faster than they had ever gone before. Amber's face - and the thought of another face that he had not yet seen. What did his son look like? What colour was his hair? If only there had been time to ask KC. To hear about the kind of baby he was. Well behaved? Noisy? How big was he? It was the most amazing thought. So long spent thinking that both mother and baby were gone. So long spent in a dulled kind of mourning, and now to discover that both were alive. To hear his son's name. To be so close to him. It was enough to make him run several marathons, if that was what it took to bring them together.

He reached the hotel just as dawn was painting the buildings with the first of their daytime colours. The sun, in hiding for so long, was finally visible as the cloud at least began to disperse. There were guards everywhere, and a large tank parked right in front of the building; deterrent enough to stop almost anybody. Positioning himself behind a low wall, Bray watched the building with eagle eyes. No sign of Amber. Could she really be inside already? Surely not yet. There was no sign of her outside though. Could she have changed her mind? Might she be safe somewhere else? Even if she was still on her way here, there was hope that he could intercept her. He just had to guess from which direction she was most likely to come. Confident now, certain of their imminent reunion, his heart sang with happiness and excitement.

And then a group of people , hidden before by the tank, came into view almost at the steps of the hotel. A group of people being met, long before Bray could move, but a contingent of guards coming down those very steps. Bray saw a girl - an all too familiar girl - with a bundle held carefully in her arms; and a boy, with a mop of familiar red hair, and an arm wrapped carefully around the girl's shoulders. She was leaning on him, and he was reaching out with his free hand to gently stroke the tiny head that emerged from the bundle in her arms. Bray's shattering heart dropped like a stone.

Amber. The baby. Someone else - Sasha? Tribe Fury guards. It was all a mess in his brain. He felt as though everything might break. With his heart a shivering mess, and his pulse pounding with fear and shock and a terrible sense of betrayal, he pushed himself up to his feet. There were guards and there were guns and there was a bloody tank, and he knew that one word from him would be enough to get his head shot off. But that was Amber. That was his girl, and his baby, and they were giving themselves up to the enemy, and what the bloody hell was Sasha doing with them? What was he doing with an arm around Amber that she seemed to enjoy so much - to be so familiar with? And what was Sasha doing treating that baby like his own? Bray had to stop them. He had to show them that they didn't need to give themselves up. He had to show Amber that he was still alive. Out of cover now, exposed but not yet seen; not caring either way; he opened his mouth to yell - just as something powerful and heavy collided solidly with the back of his legs. He fell hard, with a hoarse choke born as a cry of surprise, but stifled by something pressed over his mouth. All the same it made one of the guards look up, but nobody seemed suspicious enough to bother leaving their post. Unseen by them Bray tried to stand again, but something was holding him down. Something wiry and strong and very determined, that wrapped itself around him, and pressed a hand that smelt of cordite ever more firmly against his mouth. He tried to yell; tried to scream Amber's name; tried to free himself from the impossible tangle of familiar brown limbs; but there was no way up. He managed to sit, but it was in time only to see the door banging shut behind the little group of people. Amber was gone. Only then, inspired perhaps by that most dreadful sense of loss, did he find the strength to fight Ebony off. She fell back, and he turned on her with fearsome eyes.

"What the hell are you doing, Ebony?"

"Shut up. There's still those guards to worry about. And that tank."

"Tank? Why should I care about some tank? That was my baby! I just lost my baby to Tribe Fury. My son."

"I know. I heard some of it from Salene." Ebony looked exhausted, more so than him perhaps. "Bray--"

"Shut up. I don't believe you. What did you think you were doing? I have to get them out of there."

"Bray! Bray, damn it, listen to me! You're too well known. Every one of them knows who you are. You take one step - one step - towards that building and you'll be shot down. I know you don't want to hear it, but--"

"You don't know anything. You think I care about being shot now? I've just lost everything! Now let me go. I have to get them back."

"You'll die, you stupid fool. Where's the sense in that? Bray, you can't go near that hotel, and you can't go near any Fury, without getting shot. How's that going to help you get Amber back? Think!"

"She was with Sasha." He was mumbling now, not really talking to Ebony anymore. "They looked like a family."

"Yeah. I guess they did. She thinks you're dead, Bray. You can't blame her."

"I don't blame her." He shot her a look that was pure poison. "I blame you. For driving us out of the city, so we wound up being separated up in the mountains. For persuading me not to go straight back out of the city to find her, after Racha brought me back here. And for stopping me from stopping her just then." He stood up again, and this time she could see the resolution shining out of him - in the set of his body, the angle of his head, the clenching and unclenching of his fists. He was ready to break down the door of the hotel and do whatever needed to be done. He might almost have a chance, too - if he got very, very lucky - if it wasn't for that tank. There was no way he was going to get past that alive. No way at all. He didn't seem to notice it; hoped perhaps that it was empty, or that the crew might not look his way. Ebony shook her head. She'd be damned if she was going to stand back and watch as he walked right to his death. There were no more words that she could use though. Making a grab for one of his arms, she tried to slow him. He shook her off. He was stepping over the wall now, out of cover, and she waited, cringing, for the tank to begin to turn. For the gun to fire, or for some other gun to do so from one of the hotel's windows. For the guards on the steps to advance, or for others to come from around the sides of the building. And when they didn't, in the brief, all too brief, second that she had left before the shots did start ringing out; before the tank did fire; before Bray's luck did run out as it surely must be about to do; she did the only thing that she could do. Swinging up her rifle, feeling bad all the while, she hit him across the back of the head. He crumpled immediately, and she grabbed hold of him, dragging him into better cover than before, holding him as close as she could. She wished she could hold him closer. He wasn't unconscious. Not quite. As she held him she could hear him muttering, dazed and hurting, but still focused on the girl he had just lost all over again.

"Amber," he whispered, sounding as dejected as Ebony had ever believed someone could be. She really did feel bad for him, although that might have been in part because she was feeling so bad anyway. The fighting had been awful. It had not been a good couple of days.

"Ssh," she told him, trying to calm him. "Just take it easy. You should for now. Your head..."

"Amber." It seemed to be all that he could think of. "She was with Sasha, Ebony. They were together."

"I know." She tried rocking him, but he was a dead weight in her arms. "I'm sorry. But there's no way I was going to let you get yourself killed. Not for Amber, or for anybody. I'm sorry."

"Sorry." He still seemed confused. His eyes didn't look focused, and his shoulders were beginning to shake. "I'm sorry Amber. Let you down. Probably better off with Sasha. All my fault. Should've... done something."

"Bray..." But it was no good. He wasn't listening. Keeping one eye on the hotel in case of company, Ebony changed her position so that she could hold him more carefully, and just that little bit more tightly. He was fighting back tears. It was only then that she realised that so was she.

In the hotel most of the rooms were empty. Almost everybody was out fighting, and those few that weren't were away patrolling the perimeter of the city. There had been nobody inside the building to see the brief scuffle between Ebony and Bray; nobody, that was, save for one person.

He was standing in Silver's office, although Silver himself was not present. He was down in the cellar, where he had constructed a magnificent war room for himself over the course of the last few days. A place of maps and tables, and toy soldiers to mark the positions both of his men and Racha's. He was enjoying it all much as he might have enjoyed a game, although his heart was the heart of a soldier, and he knew that it was all for real. A part of him wanted to be out there leading his troops, but he knew that he had to stay inside. He was a figurehead; a leader; a king. If he died, so he believed, his army would die with him. And so in his bunker he remained.

The figure up in his office also had no intention of going out to fight in the war; and for fairly similar reasons. He couldn't die yet either, for his cause would also die with him. He too had to stay alive, for the good of his army, and for all that they were fighting for. The time was not yet right for him to take his place at the right hand of the one he lived to serve - or claimed to live to serve. One day, maybe, but not today. Not in this battle. Not against that foe.

And so he stood by the window, staring down at the street. He saw Amber approaching the building, and recognised her, and wondered at the baby in her arms. He saw Bray, he saw Ebony, and he saw all that passed between them. And he smiled. He was still smiling when they had passed out of sight, although he didn't really know why. Perhaps he just enjoyed seeing Bray in distress. It was something to be savoured, for it reminded him of past tussles, and of simmering resentments awaiting their resolve. And it reminded him of why he was here, and why he had decided to throw in with Tribe Fury.

For power. For victory. For the greater chance of winning himself a city; and whatever greater realms might follow after. This time, with his enemies broken and scattered; with a mighty army on his side, doing so much of his work for him; with his acolytes helping him to craft this war into something of which he could truly be proud - this time, he couldn't fail. He was going to build Zoot's empire of chaos, and he was going to build it upon the unsuspecting empire of Tribe Fury. He had come a long way since the Mall Rats had found him skulking in his world of sewers and drains.

The Guardian was heading back to glory; and it was all going just as he had planned.

Chapter Text

The hotel was a familiar building. Amber took some comfort from that. The simple grey corridors carried little evidence of Tribe Fury's presence, and in places the decoration that she recognised still remained. One of Ebony's election posters. A poster advertising the use of their now departed currency. A public health warning from the days of the Virus. All things to make her remember, and relax just a little - then tense up when she remembered that there was nothing to relax about. This wasn't Ebony's hotel anymore. Ebony was dangerous, but Amber at least knew her; knew how to deal with her. She didn't know who she was being taken to see this time. Her arms curled protectively about Eden, but he was asleep and oblivious. Only Sasha noticed the gesture, and tightened his own grip around Amber's shoulders in response.

They were expecting to go to Ebony's old office, since it had been set up for convenient use as such, but instead they headed for the stairs. There was another surprise waiting though, for instead of being taken upstairs, to the grander rooms above, they were taken downstairs. The basement was a grim place of cells and storerooms - not where Amber had expected to be led. Surely somebody would want to speak to them, even if only to find out who they were? And they wouldn't expect to keep a young baby in a cold and dark cell? Instead they went past all of that, to a red door at the far end of the basement. A guard waited outside, face stony, body stiff. At their approach he rapped smartly on the door, then opened it without looking inside the room beyond, and moved aside to let them pass. As soon as they had entered he shut the door again, as efficient and brisk as any professional servant.

"Good morning." The sole figure awaiting them in the room was tall, with hair dyed shining silver, and a uniform more grand than even the most ostentatious military dictator had dreamt of in the old world. Gold braid and medal ribbons seemed to adorn every part of him, along with buttons that gleamed as brightly as his silver hair. Amber didn't need to wonder who he was; he had to be the Fury leader.

"It is morning, isn't it?" He came towards them, hands behind his back, swagger stick tucked under one arm, back ramrod straight. His highly polished shoes clicked smartly on the floor with every step. Amber frowned, trying to remember. She had only just been outside; she just hadn't been taking any notice of her surroundings. Sasha answered the question instead.

"More or less," he said. "The sun is just coming up."

"Dawn. Surely the finest time of day?" The silver topped vision in front of them flashed a dazzling smile. "My name is Silver. Lord General Silver. Admiral Silver. King Silver, if you prefer. The rank is unimportant; I've had underlings with higher ones I'm sure. What matters is who I am."

"We're... pleased to meet you." Amber wasn't sure quite how to react to him. She hadn't imagined that the Furies would be led by somebody who seemed to be mad. Silver's grin cranked up a notch or two, showing a charisma that couldn't be denied, and an odd warmth of personality that might have made her smile back had things not been quite so fraught.

"What do you think of my war room?" He gestured about him, to the tables draped with painstakingly detailed, hand-drawn maps, covered in tiny lead soldiers. Little tanks and gun placements, and soldiers painted in non-camouflage colours, presumably to denote civilians, also stood abut the place. Giant arrows showed the movement of the different players in the battle, and complex diagrams of military manoeuvres hung from the walls. There were books too - Caesar, Xenophon, Napoleon, Churchill - books on or by military leaders throughout the ages. Sun-Tzu's Art Of War lay on top of a pile of books of military histories and fiction, and what looked close to a hundred little coloured pieces of paper marked different places within the texts. Sasha nodded slowly.

"It's ... very impressive."

"Thank you." Silver sat down on a high-backed, stiff chair beside one of the tables, and crossed his legs precisely. "I never leave here now. Not really. This is the centre of operations for my battle against the enemy." He leaned forward suddenly. "You know that the rebels have brainwashed my second in command? He's with them now, fighting against me. But we're making headway. Creating inroads." He smiled. "Killing lots of people. We'll get him back. Destroy the rebels. Tame the city again. It helps when people make our job easier by surrendering to us like this. I'm obliged to you - in a sense. Hence me having you brought down here, instead of sending you straight off upstairs. "Are you rebels?"

"No." Sasha shot a glance across at Amber, well aware that that was exactly what she wanted to be. A rebel, fighting back against Tribe Fury. It was what she would be doing, if not for Eden. "We're new to the city. We came in to trade, but we got trapped here when the fighting started. We couldn't do much except hide because of the baby."

"Good." Silver nodded thoughtfully. "Good good. Because obviously if you were rebels I'd have to have you executed. I think the original plan was to have them all hung, drawn and quartered, but it's not exactly practical doing it that way."

"I'd... imagine not." Trying not to look ill, Amber managed a very wobbly smile. "So... what is going to happen to us? To all of us?"

"Retraining. Eventually. The child is too young for school, but all new recruits have to learn our ways. Our rules. Sadly our training programme has been rather diminished of late. Fighting wars gets in the way. Still, there's plenty of time; or will be, once the rebels are all dead."

"Yes." Sasha nodded, unconvinced and hoping that it didn't show. "Good."

"Er... yes." Trying to inject a little more conviction into things, Amber smiled humourlessly and echoed his reply. "Good."

"Indeed." Silver bounced to his feet, eyes shining just a little too brightly to be reassuring. "Indeed. So. In the meantime, until the war is over, you'll stay here. Under guard, but comfortable enough unless you give us reason to suspect you of disloyalty. Because then we'd have to have you executed, obviously."

"Obviously." Suddenly Eden felt very heavy in Amber's arms. She lifted him closer to her heart, and tried not to let her hands shake. Silver smiled at her indulgently.

"An attractive child. He'll look fine dressed in our uniform in a few years."

"Thank you." Her grip tightened automatically, but Silver didn't seem to notice her distaste. He merely nodded, as though acknowledging a genuine gratitude.

"Would you like to stay awhile? See how the war is being fought? " He seemed to be anticipating an answer in the affirmative, for he carried on talking without bothering to wait for a reply. "Here we have my finest troops. You'll see how they're pushing against the rebels? Notice how many buildings have been destroyed, in both the two neighbouring sectors. That's to prevent the enemy from taking shelter. We've relocated all loyal civilians. The Independents, and any who have aligned themselves with the rebels, have to be considered legitimate targets of course." He smiled placidly. Sasha and Amber exchanged a look.

"You... must devote a lot of time to the war," pointed out Sasha. Silver nodded.

"Like I said, I rarely leave this room now. And how could I? Wars need command centres. Need to be run. Led. Shaped. Otherwise what do you have? Chaos. Madness. Dysfunction. Disaster." He shook his head. "No, my place is in here, leading the way. Commanding the troops."

"Deciding who lives and dies," put in Amber, unable to stop herself. He nodded briskly at her, like a teacher pleased with a good point made by a student.

"Exactly, yes. I decide who dies. Who is captured, who is executed. Which streets are destroyed, which food supplies cut off, which tribes scattered to the winds. As I said, I am the king. The leader. The supreme autocrat."

"But you said that you had a second in command," pointed out Sasha. Silver nodded.

"Brigadier Racha. My second in all things. He did much of the day to day running of things, but with him gone..." He gestured around him as though to indicate that everything was left to him alone now - but it seemed as though the gesture also indicated the evidence of his madness, and how that was also a result of the pressures caused by Racha's disappearance. Amber nodded, forcing a smile.

"So you're all alone now?"

"Not quite alone. Not quite. I have my advisors, my battalion commanders, my men. But command has always been lonely. By its very nature. By its very meaning. I have alliances though. Other tribal leaders who understand some of my pressures, my problems. Some. My friend who guards my office for me, and watches the state of the streets down below. He makes things a little less lonely. He promises to help bring the rebels crashing to their knees. War makes men, you know. War forges men, into something more. War creates the future. My friend has shown me that."

"Great friend." Amber kept her voice low. Sasha nodded bleakly. Silver just smiled.

"You're probably tired," he said at last, finally able to see past his own fiery crucible. "My men will take you to one of the guest rooms. You can eat. Sleep. Do whatever you wish to do. You'll not leave the hotel until the war is over, I'm afraid. It's simply not safe. Certainly not if you're unarmed, and I can't allow you to have weapons until you're with us properly. After the training, and the teaching, and the testing. In a few weeks, perhaps, you'll be out there, patrolling the streets and helping to mop up the survivors. Until then, rest. Read our leaflets, Acquaint yourselves with some of our preliminary level rules. And keep away from the windows."

"Yes. Sir." Sasha tried to stand to attention, but to Amber, used to seeing him play the fool, it looked clumsy and inappropriate. Silver didn't seem to mind. He nodded his head in acknowledgement, and waved an arm at the guards to take the new recruits away.

"Oh. By the way." Stopping them just as they reached the door, Silver raised his voice. They looked back. "If you try to escape, or show signs of disloyalty, or suggest in any way that you may have come in here under false pretences, you will be shot. Both of you. The child will never even know your names. Good day."

"Good... day." Amber let her voice trail off as the guards marched her away. So they were in for indoctrination, retraining. The possibility of being sent out into the streets with guns. She didn't want that. She didn't want any of this. She wasn't even entirely sure why she had wanted to come here now, with the immediate dangers to Eden removed, and so many of the tensions and discomforts of the moment vanished away. But it was too late to worry about any of that now. All she could do was to see where this next step would lead.

The room was comfortable; a typical hotel room in many ways, although there was no running water, and the sheets had gone from the bed. To make up for the uselessness of the taps there was a large plastic tank of water beside the door, and three or four metal bowls obviously supposed to serve as cups. The rest of the décor was more traditional; several paintings were still hanging on the wall, and there were highly decorated lamps in all four corners of the room. Needless to say they didn't work, but they had not been broken. Even the bulbs were still in one piece. Sasha looked about as soon as the guards had left, and nodded appreciatively.

"I think this will do very nicely. Do you think we should have tipped the busboy?"

"He didn't bring our luggage up." Amber sat down on the bed, and settled Eden there. He was still asleep, and made little snuffling noises that made her heart feel odd. It reminded her again of why she had chosen to come here; because this little life deserved not to have to live in a ruin, with gunshots always threatening to come ever closer. She hadn't been able to think of anything else to do. That was something that she was going to have to live with.

"You alright?" Sasha went over to one of the windows, but they had been boarded up with uneven slats of wood, and he couldn't see out. Amber watched him, wordless for a moment. Finally she nodded.

"Yes, I think so. I just... all of those things that he said. I don't want to go patrolling the streets with a gun in my hand. I don't want Eden to grow up thinking that all of this is normal."

"Maybe the rebels will have won by then."

"Maybe." She didn't sound very convinced. "It's all so crazy out there. Doesn't seem as though anyone will ever win. It never does. We get rid of one lot, and another lot turns up straight away."

"Never had guns before though, have you. Never will again, with a bit of luck. Hang in there, Amber. It'll all turn out okay in the end."

She smiled fondly at him. "You know, when you say it like that I believe you. I don't know why."

"Because you're basically an optimist at heart. Like me." He sat down beside her. "It'll be okay, Amber. We'll be okay. All of us. Eden won't have to grow up in Tribe Fury, and you won't have to go out there wielding a gun. Just give it time. And a little faith, hey?"

"Yes." She turned back to Eden. "Faith. Sounds easier, somehow, when I can't hear any gunfire anymore. I'm sorry, Sasha. You shouldn't be here. I don't know what made me crack like that. I just couldn't cope anymore. It all got too much, like it never has before."

"You've never had Eden to worry about before. Nobody could blame you for what happened, Amber. Nobody but you knows what it's like to be you, out there, with a baby, not knowing what--" He broke off. "Well. Knowing that there are people out there who you care about, and not knowing what's happening to any of them. Makes me glad I've never made any close ties in the places I've travelled through." He smiled faintly. "Except with you."

"Yes." Her eyes had a faraway look, and of course she was thinking of Bray. Somehow she seemed less broken than before though; as if, each time, it became a little easier to think that he might be dead. That was a natural healing process, he supposed, although in these days, when there was so much death, when they had all lost their parents and so many of their friends, who could tell what a natural mourning period was? How should it progress? He just knew that he didn't want to risk being nothing more than a rebound for her. And that meant not knowing how to respond to her now. He settled for smiling, and standing up again.

"Want to see if there's anything to eat?" he asked. "Silver promised us something, and since nothing was left here with us, there might be some stores in one of these cupboards. Worth looking."

"Yes!" Her sudden enthusiasm made him smile; they had both been for far, far too long without food. Too long hiding from the fighting, unable to go in search of stores with Eden to think about. He began to ransack the cupboards.

"Okay... we've got powdered soup... Not sure how to make that unless you fancy starting a fire in here to boil some water, but we'll think about that in a minute. Instant noodles? Ah ha!" He held something up, looking triumphant. "A tin of beans and sausages! Now doesn't that make you feel right at home?!"

"Beans and sausages. After I moved into the Mall, I think I must have gone for months with nothing but that to eat. It's incredible just how many tins were made."

"Given how many there are still left, and the fact that nobody's made any since before the adults died, yeah, it is pretty incredible." He shrugged. "Still, tastes okay, doesn't it."

"Maybe we can make a fire in the fireplace." Checking that Eden was unlikely to fall off the bed, she went over to the fireplace. The remnants of a fire were still there, and somebody had left some pieces of coal and wood in the little decorative coal scuttle beside the fireplace. More than enough to heat through some food, she decided, and began to arrange some of the pieces. "Got anything to light this with?"

"I think I still have some matches somewhere, yes." He checked his pockets, and produced a little waterproof box. "Would madam like to move aside?"

"Just give them here." She took the box, and lit the fire quickly. Sasha set some water to boil straight away, and after opening the tin, stuck it straight in the fire to heat up. They sat together, with a bowl of drinking water each, to watch their impromptu meal beginning to bubble.

"Just like proper home cooking." Sasha mixed some of the powdered soup into the boiling water, and gave it a frenzied stirring. Amber laughed.

"My dad was a great cook. He wouldn't let anything powdered into the house."

"Really? Your childhood was missing something, you know. You can't quite beat a meal that only takes three minutes to cook."

"These days I don't care much either way." They shared the beans and sausages as the soup simmered, then drank it as quickly as they could. Amber winced.

"I suppose a burnt mouth is better than an empty stomach."

"Usually, yes." He stretched, feeling peculiarly satisfied, no matter what the uncertainties of their situation. "I hadn't realised how hungry I was."

"I certainly knew how hungry I was." She went back over to sit beside Eden, and yawned powerfully as she did so. "Good grief, listen to me. We've not long woken up."

"You haven't slept properly in days. Neither of us have. If you want to sleep, go ahead. You're safe now, Amber. Really safe. You can sleep for as long as you like. And you can have a hot meal when you wake up, too. When was the last time we could be sure about that?"

"It sounds wonderful," she confessed, and without even thinking about it, she lay down beside her son. "Really wonderful. Hot food. Now if only there was hot running water, as well."

"I'm sure we can scare up a shower or a bath eventually. Tribe Fury must wash." He sat down on the bed as well, on the other side of the sleeping child. "He'll need to bath, too, or he'll wind up getting nappy rash, or bed sores, or whatever they call it."

"I know." She yawned loudly again. "Thanks, Sasha."

"Thanks?" He seemed surprised. "What for?"

"Oh, you know. For coming with me. This would seem a whole lot worse if you weren't here as well."

"Oh. That." He shrugged and smiled fondly at her, even though her eyes were closed and she could not have known what his expression was. "I couldn't have left you, Amber. Not to come here. Not to go anywhere. I couldn't ever leave you." The dreamy smile faded slightly, though the look in his eyes didn't change. "I won't ever leave you. Not ever again."

But by then she was asleep, and she didn't hear a word.

Chapter Text

Silver swept half a dozen of his little toy soldiers from the surface of a table, and threw them away across the room. He couldn't remember which side they had been on as soon as he had thrown them away, but that didn't matter. They were gone now. They were irrelevant. He reached for his walkie-talkie, and barked out a few orders to the head of operations in sector ten, then turned to change his orders into toy soldier map manoeuvres. A knock at the door didn't make him look up, but he did manage to take the time to call out.

"Come in if you have to. Stay out if you don't." The door clicked open.

"I'm sorry. I know that your work here is vital." Grinning with all the sincerity of a good actor playing a rôle, the Guardian joined Silver by the table. "I just hoped that you could give me some kind of an update on events. Any news of the rebels?"

"The usual. People dying. People advancing." Silver barked out a few more orders into his radio, then looked up. "Was there something specific that you were wondering about?"

"Specific? Not necessarily." The Guardian successfully composed his features into an expression of only the mildest concern. "I was just wondering if there might be an update on Bray. His whereabouts. Any new reports or sightings? "

"Bray?" Silver didn't look at all interested. "Didn't I have him executed? Rebel, saboteur. Led a gang against some of my men a while back? He was captured, and I remember signing his death warrant."

"He escaped," filled in the Guardian, with a faint trace of irritation that as usual went unnoticed. Silver, as self-possessed - and self-obsessed - as ever, never seemed to truly process any sign of disrespect. He believed that everybody loved him, all of the time. "When Racha was tempted away, remember?"

"Bray brainwashed Racha?" A flicker of something showed in Silver's eyes. "Well then he'll have to be killed, won't he. No, no sign of him yet, but we'll get him. You can watch the execution if it bothers you so much. Was there anything else?"

"You're very kind." The Guardian forced a smile. "Um... Were those new recruits I saw being brought in? The young family."

"Yes. What of it?" Silver's mind had already drifted away from the conversation; his monumental ego only allowed a limited time for the affairs of others. He moved a few more pieces on his board, then delivered a few more orders to his scattered troops. Watching it all, the Guardian couldn't help but be impressed. Silver was unhinged, impossibly big-headed, and hugely deluded about almost everything - but he was one hell of a tactician. Underneath the fractured mind was an impressive intelligence, and a real military ability.

"You really do keep all of this going, don't you?" he realised aloud. Silver looked up, flashing, however briefly, a warm and genuine smile. He was very good looking, and once upon a time he had known how to use his smile to great effect. Now that troops and rebels and wars were all that truly occupied his mind, such things had long ceased to matter to him, but for one brief second the boy of old was visible. The boy who had been to dances; courted girls; juggled three dates on the same night. The boy who had made his mother's heart melt every time she had looked at him. His eyes flashed with a sudden hardness that owed less to the years of military training, and more to all that had come since.

"I am the leader," he proclaimed, in an immensely serious voice. "The Lord General. The King. I rule everything in this city."

"Yes." The Guardian nodded, understanding now. "You keep everything going. Keep everything moving. It's because of you that this war is being fought the way it is. Without you there'd probably be chaos."

"There would." Silver nodded. "Great chaos. And chaos is the opposite of the military way. There must be order. Rules. Regulations. There must be somebody in command."

"Oh, quite." The Guardian wandered closer, looking over the maps, and the books, and the many little hand-drawn diagrams. It looked like chaos, yes - but it wasn't. Not a bit of it.

"You were asking a question." Changing the subject with sudden speed, Silver began prowling around a second table, studying the many toy soldiers with a frightening intensity. "About the new recruits?"

"Yes." The Guardian's mind worked as fast as Silver's, and he didn't need any time to turn his thoughts back to the previous subject. "The new recruits. What will happen to them?"

"Training. The usual. Just as soon as I can spare the time and the men to get the training programme back on track." Silver paced around the table, frowning at it from all angles. "Why?"

"They haven't been executed then?"

"No." Silver eyed him curiously. "Why? Do you think they should be?"

"Oh, I doubt it, Lord General." The Guardian beamed as he spoke the title, well aware how Silver liked to hear it. "I just wondered if they were still alive. I thought that I recognised them. I might be wrong, but I was thinking that they might be useful to have around. Certainly for the time being, anyway."

"Yes. Well. They'll stay here in the hotel until I tell them otherwise. They're safe upstairs in one of the rooms."

"Upstairs." The Guardian nodded thoughtfully. "Right. That's all I wanted to know, Lord General. Thank you. For everything."

"Everything?" Silver was no longer paying anything like full attention, which was exactly what the Guardian had anticipated. He smiled thinly.

"Yes. Everything. Goodbye, Lord General. It's been... interesting. Very... interesting." But Silver was no longer listening.

The Guardian left the war room in a cheerful mood, a jauntiness in his step that hadn't been there before. So Amber hadn't been killed; so she was still alive, right upstairs. That might prove to be useful some time soon.

"The Lord General does not wish to be disturbed," he told the guard on the door. "Under any circumstances. Understand?"

"Yes." The guard was never sure whether or not to refer to the Guardian as 'sir'; but he knew that an order from Silver was not something that should ever be questioned. "Under any circumstances."

"Good." The Guardian marched smartly away down the corridor, heading back up to the main part of the hotel. Behind him the guard watched as he disappeared out of sight, a strange sense of unease troubling his mind. He wasn't sure that he trusted the Guardian; but he didn't dare risk the consequences of disobeying an order from Silver. Instead of opening the door, he rested his head against it and listened hard. Inside he could hear the chatter of conversation on one of the walkie-talkies; the familiar, reassuring sound of Silver going about his work. Commanding his troops. Winning their war. The guard smiled, satisfied now. Everything was alright. Everything was as it should be. And without another thought, he settled himself back into position.

Walking away from the hotel felt like the longest walk of Bray's life. It had been some time before Ebony had managed to get him to move. He had lain in her arms like a heartbroken child, and she had wondered if perhaps he would stay like that forever; but in the end she had managed to make him listen to her. She had got him to stand up, made him turn away from the hotel, had practically dragged him away down the alley that had brought them both here. She felt all the time that there were eyes watching their departure, but if somebody was standing at one of the hotel windows, and had seen them leave, he or she seemed in no hurry to send anybody in pursuit. Ebony tried to close her mind to the idea that there was anybody there, but she could feel her pulse rate soaring. The sooner they put the hotel far behind them the better - but Bray had other ideas.

He was walking slowly. Hellishly slowly, as though his feet were lead weights. She pushed him, she cajoled him, she swore at him. It made no difference. He was like a man in a trance, with no awareness of anything, except that every so often he would stop and look back. She dragged him on again each time, trying to get through to him with her encouragements and her pleadings and her hopeless attempts at reassurance. Amber will be fine; the baby is okay; it's not what it looked like with Sasha. Bray showed no response to the comments, but when at last they rounded the corner and the hotel was gone from sight, he stopped looking back, and let her push him onwards a little faster. He didn't speak, barely looked aware of his surroundings, stumbled occasionally on obstacles that he didn't see. She kept him moving though. Heavy footed and slow, unresponsive and miserable, but mobile at least. Just about.

For Bray the walk was something he thought about only in snatches between thoughts of all that had just happened. His discovery that Amber had given birth to a baby boy; his desperate, exhausting dash to stop her from surrendering to Tribe Fury. His failure. The sight of her walking into the hotel, Sasha's arms around her, Bray's baby son held between them for all the world as though Sasha was the father. It all flashed through his mind like a mixed up film looping in fast forward. He wanted to get angry; furiously angry. He wanted to throw things and break things and hit things, but he couldn't seem to stop his feet from walking on along the street. Couldn't seem to find his voice so that he could yell out his rage. Instead he dug his nails into his palms until the blood began to run, and imagined every brutal, violent act that he could perpetrate upon any member of Tribe Fury he might find. The knowledge that he could never bring himself to hurt anybody that way didn't help him to feel any better, and he found himself only simmering all the more. By the time they arrived back at the makeshift headquarters that had been their on-off home for some weeks, he felt as though he were burning at several hundred degrees. An explosion seemed imminent - but whether it would be into rage, hysteria, or mindless violence, he really didn't know. He just knew that something had to happen. His current catatonic misery could surely have only a limited life.

The headquarters was quiet; few enough people were there. They were still all out fighting, as they had been without a break since the explosion at the power generator beside the hotel. Only a few wounded lay about, listless and unmoving, and a few guards patrolled the more exposed places. Ebony tried to make Bray sit down, but he went past the others, into the building and on through crumbing corridors. The office where Archer governed the food rations and guard shifts. The kitchen where they tried to make their pitiful food stores into something remotely edible. The room where they had stored their weapons and ammunition. It was almost empty now; just a few cartridges were strewn about on the floor, and several parts of a disassembled rifle lay in a discarded heap. Bray stared at it all, not really processing the sight, then walked on again. He felt as though he were looking for something, and never quite finding it. Probably because he didn't have a clue what it was.

He stopped walking when the corridor reached its end, at a fire escape blocked with rubble. Here was where they had thrown all their rubbish, in heaps in front of the unopenable door. Cans, boxes, plastic wrappers, spent cartridges, bottles, as well as apple cores, cheery stones and scattered cabbage stalks. There was an impressively evil smell emanating from it all, and a black, rotten ooze that had spread itself over the floor. Bray kicked at it, watching it spatter over the walls, then started on the rubbish. The cans made a satisfying noise as they smacked against the metal door, although the rest of the rubbish didn't co-operate nearly so well. Half-heartedly now he kicked at the rest of it, scattering it thoroughly about the corridor's dead end. He could feel the emotions building, although he didn't know what they were yet. He didn't know that until a misjudged kick hit the wall instead of an empty cardboard box, and he felt pain flare sharply in his foot. That was when he finally snapped.

He started with the kicking, more violently than before. Cans and boxes flew higher than his head, and the rotting organic rubbish stuck to the walls and the ceiling. With every kick he felt his rage grow, until his feet were a blur to his half-closed eyes, and the rubbish was flying like flocks of frightened birds. With a last, violent kick that sent a spent cartridge flying straight through the glass of a nearby window, he spun about on a high of pure, unadulterated rage, and punched the fire door hard. It rattled on its hinges, and he punched it again, with the other fist this time, then kicked it so hard it felt almost as though his foot might break. A dull clapping slowed his wild attacks, and he glanced back over his shoulder. Racha stood there, his uniform dramatically spattered with mud and blood, but his blond hair as immaculate as ever. Presumably he had a specially tailored helmet, or had put out an order that no dirt was to spatter him from the neck up. Bray glared at him, the fury within him now built to a very satisfying level. If it showed on his face, Racha didn't notice it; or more likely he didn't care. He merely smiled.

"Having fun, Bray?"

" Shut up." He could hardly spit the words out, and the gruffness of his voice surprised him. It was the first sound to successfully break out of his throat since his furious berating of Ebony back at he hotel, and he would never have recognised it as his own had he been called upon to identify it. Racha's smile was more of a smirk now.

"Now now. How's that going to help? I saw Ebony. She told me everything. She seems rather upset, and I'll tell you just what I told her. Amber's gone. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. We'll get her in the end, and your son, when we've won the war - so you get back out there, put her out of your head, and you fight." He smiled with more of his usual warmth, so that his black eyes gleamed softly. "Be a good boy, hey? No more melodramatics, or running off on suicide missions without my say so. Understand?"

"Why you--" Bray started forward in a fury, just about ready to try beating Racha to a pulp. He threw a punch, but the brigadier dodged it easily, catching the racing fist on its way past, and twisting the arm that followed it. Bray found himself spun neatly around, and slammed hard against the wall. His head bounced off again with a resounding thump, and Racha smiled unpleasantly. For once there was no trace of flirtation in his face or his voice, and still holding Bray's wrist, he emphasised his point with a sharp pressure on the bloodied knuckles, so recently used to beat a tattoo on the solid metal fire door. The other hand gripped Bray's neck, pressing him heavily back against the wall.

"Never try that again." Racha's voice was like ice. "Never. Understand me?"

"Get off." Bray was still angry, but the fire was muted now by Racha's obvious superiority of position and strength. His struggles were futile. The Fury rebel grinned at him with a glimmer of his more usual humour.

"You want Amber back, you'll do as you're told. She's safe in the hotel for now, but there's no telling how long that will last. If Silver's people win, she could be sent away to a retraining centre, and I can't be sure that I know where those are going to be from now on. Besides. If Silver wins, I'll probably be dead, so I can't help you anyway. You'll probably be dead too. So... the only way to get Amber back is to win this war." He released Bray, and patted him gently on the cheek. "So get back to the line and rejoin your unit. Are we clear?"

"Yes." Bray's fury was burning in his eyes, along with humiliation and hatred, but he fought the urge to strike out at Racha again. Instead he walked away from him, back down the corridor, back outside; back along the roads that would take him to where he had left Salene and the new recruits. Ebony was waiting for him just out of sight of the headquarters and she fell into step beside him. She didn't speak, but the expression in her quiet, deep eyes was enough to tell him that she knew what had happened. Ebony always seemed to know what was going on.

"Ebony?" They had been walking for some time before Bray spoke, by which time they were nearly back at his former position on the line. She looked across at him.

"What?"

"Don't talk to anybody. About what happened. Please?"

"Me?! Who would I talk to?" She put a hand on his shoulder. "Bray... saying that it's going to be okay would just seem trite at the moment, but we're going to survive this, and so is Amber. I don't know what's going on with Sasha, but whatever it is... it'll work out. Eventually. Listen, Racha knows Silver. He's good at out-thinking him; he's proved that. He can second-guess him, like they've got the same mind more or less. If everything carries on the way it has been, then no matter how outnumbered we are we've got a good chance. A really good chance. It'll all just take time, that's all. Just time."

"Maybe." Except that it wouldn't just take time; it would take lives, too. Ebony never seemed to appreciate such things. For a second he put his hand on hers, as it rested on his shoulder. Then he sighed. "Come on. We should hurry. I know I don't make much difference to the way that the fighting is going, but I'd like to see what's happening."

"Yeah." Letting her hand fall away she followed on at his side, like a little echo of his darker temperament. Even the sound of her footsteps sounded reassuring somehow. Bray didn't think he had ever been happier to have somebody beside him. And somehow that thought destroyed all sense of reassurance, and made everything seem more tumultuous still.

Chapter Text

Lex leaned back and wiped the sweat from his forehead, leaving trails of grime in its place. He hadn't been this hot since before the bad weather had left everything cold and damp. Digging was hot work though; digging, scraping, probing for hidden compartments behind walls, dragging up flooring, moving furniture. Bray had thought that there were guns hidden here somewhere, in this big, deserted place where he had once met Danni. Lex had been amazed by the idea, but time had taught him to trust Bray, even if he was an unspeakable annoyance at times. His head was usually screwed on right, so if he thought this was a possibility, Lex was going to see it through until the end. Even if that did mean splinters in his fingers, knots in his muscles, cracked and torn nails, and a very sore back.

"Ow!" KC's hammer and chisel had slipped again, and this time he had scraped a good sized piece of skin from the back of his hand. Chloe went to clean him up with some of their precious drinking water. Lex swore under his breath. Blood was the only thing they were getting out of this. They certainly weren't getting any guns.

"How long have we been searching now?" Exhausted, exasperated, and now also in pain, KC threw his hammer away and glared up at Lex. The older Mall Rat shrugged, looking as if he really couldn't care.

"Counting yesterday? About fifteen hours in all."

"And this isn't that big a place." KC stood up, and gestured about the room. "Wouldn't we have found something by now, if there was actually something to find?"

"Not necessarily. This whole place is a secret annexe, after all. Why shouldn't it have another secret annexe of its own?" He sighed. "But it's pretty bloody well hidden."

"I guess it had to be." KC stretched ruefully and picked up his hammer once again. "Okay. So you're some government guy who's got to hide a bunch of guns. Where do you put them?"

"Somewhere where they'll be hard to find if you don't know about them, but easy to get at if you do." Lex scowled. "And somewhere we won't think of looking, obviously."

"That's 'cause you're thinking too hard." Chloe laid aside her bottle of water and looked up at them both, amused by Lex's glower. She would, to him, always be the very little girl who so often got in the way. "Seriously. The only reason somebody is going to be pulling this place apart is if they know what they're looking for. So the guns are going to be in a place you'd never look. Aren't they?"

"I suppose that does make sense." Lex's frown grew. "But how do we know where the last place we'd look is? I mean, where's the most unlikely place?"

"Where we haven't looked yet?" KC stared about. The evidence of their work was everywhere, showing all of the places where they had looked - the flooring ripped up, the plaster hacked away, the holes in the ceiling. Lex shrugged.

"There isn't anywhere we haven't looked. Not really. There can't be."

"There has to be, if Bray's right." Chloe had always had a typically childish belief in the virtual infallibility of the older gang member, particularly Bray and Amber. Lex sighed.

"Yes, I know. But where? There's no basement. No attic. We've checked under the floors, in the walls. Where else-?" He stopped. "Chloe, you might just be a genius. Speak up a little sooner next time."

"You told me to shut up and stay shut up," she pointed out, without animosity. He glared.

"Yeah, and you always do as you're told."

"Does this mean you've thought of something?" She looked excited, in the hope that what she had said might have inspired him to come up with some new theory. "Really?"

"Maybe." He nodded. "I mean, I suppose there is somewhere else left to look, if you think about it."

"Lex?" KC's round face lit up, partly with interest, and partly with delight that his old hero might be about to solve the mystery. Lex said nothing, however; he merely walked over to one of the many holes knocked into the interior structure of the building, and bent to pick up one of the heavy blocks that made up the inner layer of the wall. The plaster that had covered the blocks had been hurled every which way, but the blocks themselves remained undamaged. They were too tough and heavy not to have done. With a faintly smug grin, Lex laid down the block in the middle of the floor, pulled his hammer and his chisel from his belt, and delivered the most powerful blow that he could muster. The block cracked - and with a second, less forceful blow, it broke open. Within the hollow space inside, wrapped in an oiled cloth, was a squat, black handgun. He whistled.

"Bloody hell. Didn't really think I'd be right."

"Amazing!" Delighted, KC set to work on another block, finding an identical gun inside it. "How many do you reckon there are?"

"Could be as many as there are blocks." Lex looked around. "There's a hell of a lot of them. We'll have to be careful. I should think the place has been built so that taking out this layer won't make the the building fall down, but we'll have to be careful anyway.. Better be safe than have a building fall on your head."

"I could go for help," offered Chloe. "Luke and Jack might have some ideas about shoring the place up, and they'd be extra manpower." Lex shook his head, rather vigorously she thought.

"No." He spoke forcefully. "No, I don't think so. Luke, Jack, Trudy - I trust them, sure, but we can't get to them without running the risk of the Badlanders hearing. I'm not sure if that's a good idea. I just don't know if I trust them. I don't know why, and I'm not sure when I started thinking this way. When Craig didn't want to help rescue Bray maybe. I don't know. I just don't want them to know about all of this. Not yet."

"Fair enough I guess. You know them better than we do." KC broke open another block, to reveal a pair of hand grenades. He wasn't sure that he wanted to know how they had been baked inside a brick. "But this could take days on our own."

"Michaels and Tai-San are standing guard outside. They can come in and help; we don't really need them on watch. Meantime we've got work to do."

"But if we don't trust anybody, what are we going to do with all these weapons?" asked Chloe. Lex shrugged, then flashed her the sort of merry, carefree grin that she hadn't seen in some time.

"I don't know," he admitted, with an odd burst of cheer. "But we'll work it out soon or later. We always do in the end."

As Lex conducted his search and recovery mission, outside in the street the city was changing again; or, rather, the battle that was shaping it did. It was hard to be sure of at first; the subtle differences in tactics; the manner in which the battle was being fought. Where once Tribe Fury had attacked with a razor sharp precision, and an expertise far beyond their years, now they seemed uncertain. They made ill thought out strikes, withdrew when victory might almost have been certain, and carried on fighting when retreat would have made far greater sense. Still they outnumbered their former colleagues, and the rebel Furies could not take so great an advantage of the new state of affairs as they would have liked. But if the tide was not turning, exactly, it was moving at the very least. The rebels took less of a battering; suffered far less casualties. In return they inflicted far greater damage than before. Bray noticed the difference almost as soon as he returned to his post. The fire bombs didn't come so often; the snipers were no longer such a curse. Slowly, inexorably, for the first time since the fighting had got underway, the rebels began to advance.

Tribe Fury didn't understand it. Their instructions had come from Silver all along; perfect, precise instructions, leading them on to glory. Now the radios that had once brought them their orders gave them nothing but static and dead air. They struggled to match Silver's cunning or warped brilliance, and with each unit now making their own battle plans, there was no longer any unity between them. The commanders of each battalion tried to agree, as they argued over the airwaves, but even military discipline had its limits. Without Silver they were at a loss.

They tried to get to the hotel, but nobody would allow them in to Silver's private domain, and not even his highest ranking subordinates dared risk his displeasure by breaking his order to be left in peace. They couldn't even claim to be worried for his safety following his long hours of silence, for when they listened outside the door of his war room, they could hear his voice inside. Always he demanded to be left alone. To think. To plan. To prepare, and the pleas to him to begin giving his orders again fell on deaf ears. The others tried to find another leader, however temporary, from amongst them, but to no avail. None of them could lead the others, and each attempt fell apart. The future of the war, it seemed, lay in increasing chaos.

And things went from bad to worse. A disastrous strike on the main body of the rebels saw half the attacking squad wiped out. A sneak attack on a different point along the front line lost a second squad their commander and his two deputies. The rebels inched their way forward, Silver remained incommunicado, and the Independents, even with their untrained forces and bare handful of guns, fought back with greater strength all the time. The Badlanders led one raid that saw fifteen members of Tribe Fury killed or injured, and a good cache of weapons commandeered. The Furies didn't know whether to be angry or embarrassed first; but it was increasingly obvious that whatever else happened they had to stop the rot. Had to win back some lost ground, or make a better, more concerted strike at their enemies. They just couldn't seem to work out how to do it. Military training, no matter how intensive, no matter how complete, couldn't make a tactical genius out of an ordinary man; and none amongst the Furies save Silver had what it took to oversee a war. But somebody thought that he did.

The Guardian took great pleasure in seeing Tribe Fury take its defeats. He laughed secretly to see the wounded limping back to the hotel; to see the commanders coming in to plead, once again, with Silver; or rather with his closed door. To see them going away again, having been forced to leave him alone in his war room, their requests for an audience denied. They were talking about replacing him, but none of them were up to the task, and he laughed at that too. There was plenty to laugh about, as far as he could see. A tribe like the Furies, smug and self-satisfied, so certain of their own strength and glory, deserved to be taken down a peg or two, and he was glad to be in a position to enjoy it all so fully; but that didn't stop him from knowing what the next step for him should be. When next the commanders came - some ten days after Silver had radioed his last order, the Guardian met them in the lobby of the hotel.

"We're not here to see you." Cold and stiff, Colonel Scarlet tried to step past the Chosen leader. The Guardian smiled patiently.

"Nothing has changed," he told them. "The Lord General Silver is still not seeing anybody. You'll have to go away again, just like all the other times, and go back to your mistakes and own goals."

"The Lord General Silver will see us." Colonel Black, the second of the Fury commanders, spoke with even more ice than Scarlet. The Guardian smirked, hiding the worst of his sarcasm, and only letting a little of it show.

"Like he did all the other times, you mean?" He shook his head. "You must know by now that Silver isn't going to let you into that room. But he does let me in."

"You?" Colonel Green, the third of the commanders, had none of the stiffness and ice about him that the first two displayed with such relish. Instead he sounded scathing. The Guardian favoured him with a most indulgent smile, then turned his eyes sharply away to look at the others instead.

"Yes," he said, quietly and confidently. "Me. He lets me in there to speak to him, and he tells me things. All kinds of things. I think I can persuade him to pass his orders on to you through me. I can't promise of course. Some sort of... fatigue... must have befallen him, to have made him neglect his duties in such a way. But I think I can get him to talk. Why don't we try it?"

"He doesn't have the Lord General's ear." Colonel Green still sounded disbelieving. "Why would he? He's just some stranger who was lucky enough to find shelter here. Why would anybody confide in him?"

"Because General Silver and I have a lot more in common than you might think. He likes to talk to me about his work. We've spent many an hour together in his war room, looking at the maps. That was before his withdrawal of course, but I think I can persuade him to let me in." The Guardian, who had long been hiding behind the image of a reasonable, spiritual man, smiled gently, and composed his features into the very epitome of innocence and harmlessness. "It can't hurt to try, can it?"

"Probably not." Colonel Blue unslung his rifle, and although he did not point it at anybody, still he made clear his threat. Colonel Orange nodded.

"They're right. It can't hurt to try, and this might get things working again. We might not be in any immediate danger of falling to the rebels, but at this rate we're going to lose an awful lot of ground - and an awful lot of men, too. The last week has shown that none of us can turn things around again. Not when Racha is leading the other side. It's like fighting Silver. If there's a chance we can get our commanding officer back, we've got to try it."

"Maybe." Black looked around at the others. "We could go with him. Stand outside the door. Maybe the Lord General will even agree to speak with us again."

"Perhaps." Scarlet didn't look convinced, but as Orange had said, they really didn't have anything to lose. He nodded. "Is everybody agreed?"

"Not agreed, no." Green shrugged. "But willing to go along with the consensus. Green Company has lost nearly a quarter of its men in the last ten days. Most of them should recover in time, if the medics do their job right, but in the meantime we're severely undermanned. The rebels backed us into a trap. Us. Green Company have hardly lost a battle since our cadet days. It's embarrassing."

"Highly embarrassing," agreed Blue. "Blue Company lost three men yesterday to the Independents. They came at us with stolen Fury guns, and they killed three of my best sharpshooters. Independents. This has got to stop."

"Then I truly hope that I can help you, gentlemen. Perhaps, if fortune smiles upon us, the great Zoot will lend his guidance." The Guardian smiled beatifically, but the five commanders just glared.

"If you're going to help us, do it," growled Black. "Don't ramble on about your peculiar gods."

"As you wish." Still smiling happily, the Guardian led the way inside the hotel. The guards on duty by the stairs, and by the door of Silver's war room, snapped to attention as the group passed, snapping off well schooled salutes at their colour-coded superiors. The Guardian knocked smartly upon the door.

"Lord General?" he called. "It's me. Jaffa. I was wondering if I might have a word?" A grin crossed his face, and he looked back at the others. "Well that's hopeful, isn't it."

"I didn't hear anything." Scarlet wasn't sure what was going on, but he knew that he didn't trust this smiling, be-robed blond, who claimed to be on their side and yet had never even tried to get his hands dirty at the front. The Guardian raised an eyebrow.

"He said hello to me," he said calmly. "Try listening a little harder. Lord General? May I come in for a moment?"

"I thought I heard something that time." Orange was frowning in concentration, but if the others had heard anything they gave no sign of it. The Guardian nodded graciously at Orange.

"Colonel, I do believe you're right. And it wouldn't do to keep the Lord General waiting, would it." He raised his voice. "Lord General? I'm coming in alone. I have a request from your men." He pushed open the door, ignoring the stony faced guard who stood beside it. If there had or hadn't been anything to hear from inside the room, the guard would have known about it; but rules forbade him from speaking to superiors without permission, or of questioning their judgement, and whatever he knew remained in his head alone. Before any of the others could complain in his stead, the door clicked shut again, and the Guardian had gone.

He re-merged some ten minutes later, to a corridor of hushed expectancy. Colonel Green had been waiting right by the door, and he tried to see past the Guardian into the room beyond. The Chosen leader foiled him with one casual, apparently coincidental, step to the side, then pulled the door shut with an innocent smile. Everybody stared at him, save for the guard, who remained staring fixedly into space. Such indifference rather stung the Guardian, who made up his mind to have the faithful retainer sent off to the front line at the first opportunity.

"The Lord General sends his apologies," he announced, with the air of a court messenger making a grand announcement. Green scowled.

"I didn't hear anything," he muttered, though his disbelief now lacked conviction. He was too eager; too hopeful for a change of direction from his leader. The Guardian looked unoffended.

"No reason why you should have. It's a thick door, and we weren't standing right beside it. You might be able to hear him if he raised his voice, but most of the time it must sound as if there's nobody in there at all. Anyway, he apologises. It all became too much for him. He says that he never before stopped to think that he was only human. But now he's ready to try again. He plans - at least at first - to issue his orders through me. The pressure might be less that way. He doesn't feel that he can constantly give different sets of orders over the airwaves anymore. So don't expect to hear from him directly. Straight away, at any rate. In the meantime, he thinks that he has a workable strategy. He wants a strike that'll put them all back in their place. Something to make the Independents crawl back under their stone, and hopefully force the rebels back a step or two. Are you with me? With the Lord General?"

"Just like that?" Green still sounded scathing. "We hear nothing all this time, and then ten minutes with you and everything is fine again? And we still have no reason to trust you."

"The Lord General trusts me," proclaimed the Guardian, in the voice of true command. "And you trust the Lord General. Do you want to win, or don't you? Perhaps you'd like to explain your feelings to Silver himself - if you're brave enough to try entering his room without his permission?"

"It is all rather unorthodox," complained Black, choosing to ignore the suggestion that one of them try to enter the war room. Blue shrugged.

"Unorthodox is allowed, in measure. In the past it's even worked to good effect. I think we should try this."

"I can't imagine Silver ever having a breakdown." Green didn't look convinced, and the Guardian raised golden eyebrows in a look of haughty shock.

"Breakdown? Who said anything about a breakdown? He's tired. He's needed time to rest, to think, to plan new strategies that might bring this skirmish to an end more quickly. It's been hard for him since his second in command left. But a breakdown? That sounds like mutinous talk to me, colonel. I don't think I'd like to be standing so close to the door and saying things like that."

"I-- Well I didn't mean--" Green shook his head. "The Lord General knows that I'm loyal. I've known him since years before the Virus came."

"Good." The Guardian drew himself up to his full height, and let his mane of golden hair, and his pristine white robe, emphasise his regal standing. "Then you'd best listen to the General's orders. You have a lot to do today, gentlemen. General Silver expects me to report back favourably this evening. Are you onboard?"

"Yes." Orange didn't even need to think. Blue was only a second behind. After a moment Scarlet and Black also nodded their agreement. Only Green hesitated, one eye on the door. He was willing it to open; wishing for Silver's own word on all of this. But the door remained closed. He nodded.

"I'm in. So what are the orders?"

"Come upstairs, gentlemen." The Guardian was beaming, delighted with the way that things were going. Everything was moving according to plan. "I have a set of instructions for each of you."

"I can't believe how badly things have gone without Silver's hand to guide us all." Blue sounded forlorn, apparently failing to understand that, at only sixteen years old, it probably wasn't to be expected that he should be a faultless tactician in his own right. Tribe Fury didn't think about age. It was an irrelevance. The Guardian smiled reassuringly.

"Well everything should be fine now," he told them, glad that none of them had bothered to ask just what it was that had gone on in the war room; what exactly he had said to Silver to bring him back into the fold. Those might be very awkward questions, for at least one particular reason. He gave silent thanks for the rigidity of their military minds, and kept his smiles turned inward. "Now listen carefully. If this is going to work, it has to be done right. Then by this time tomorrow, Tribe Fury will be well on their way to taking back every scrap of land. The rebels won't know what's hit them."

"Sounds good to me." Colonel Black began to lead the way back down the corridor, heading for the stairs. "They've been having it their way for far too long."

"Oh don't you worry." The Guardian's brain was sparkling with different outcomes and scenarios. "Believe you me, gentlemen. Everything is about to change."

Chapter Text

The rebels were getting over confident. Racha saw it, but even he couldn't be everywhere at once. Everybody had seen their fortunes change; seen their struggles getting easier. The constant bombardment of missiles was now not only less constant, but also lacked accuracy. Everything was beginning to go their way, and with over confidence came lack of care and a gradual crumbling of discipline. There was no time for drill when they all had to be constantly on their guard, but as time went by they were spending more of their time standing around doing nothing. Racha hated it. He didn't like the incompetence of the enemy. It was too hard to second-guess. Their movements had become impossible to predict. And through it all, the rebels grew lax, particularly the newer recruits and press-ganged soldiers, who had never had any proper training. Their advance became too easy, and Racha became progressively more concerned. He wasn't sure if he was worried that they were headed for a fall, or were being deliberately lulled into a false sense of security, or if he was just upset that his great game had ceased to be quite so entertaining - but he knew that he wasn't happy with things as they were. He executed a pair of raw recruits whom he caught smoking on duty, chatting in a gossipy fashion when they should have been on guard, but even that didn't seem to make the others shape up. Some of them were even talking of joining up with the Independents for one last push against Tribe Fury, to finish that war once and for all, the mere suggestion of which made his blood boil. Them! Crack military troops - and a few press-ganged civilians - joining forces with a jumbled collection of renegades who didn't even seem to know how to use the few weapons they did have in their possession. Besides; he didn't want the war over. He didn't want a peaceful city once again, with the enemy defeated or destroyed. The whole point of starting this rebellion was to have a war, and to keep it going for as long as possible. He considered executing the person who had first suggested the merger, but since it had been Bray he decided in the end to let it pass. Bray probably had his own reasons for wanting the merger. Friends amongst the Independents most likely, for whose safety he was undoubtedly concerned. Racha didn't understand him. He was always worried about somebody. Amber, her baby, his friends, the Independents - it didn't make any sense to Racha, who didn't really even worry about himself. He was goading Bray about it all one evening, when the day's fighting seemed to have come to a premature end in a barrage of clumsy fire from - Racha thought - Orange Company. Colonel Orange was one of the more capable commanders, but apparently even he couldn't put together a good sortie anymore. Racha wondered if he was worried about Silver, but put the thought from his mind. Silver had been his best friend once upon a time, but that had been before the Virus. Before everything that had happened then and since had sent the pair of them mad.

"So which of these Independents is it in particular that you care about, Bray? Any of the ones that I've met? Or do you have a few other special friends hidden away?" He enjoyed teasing the other teenager. Life was so much more fun when there were people to torture, in one sense or another. Bray didn't answer. Racha grinned.

"I see. It's like that is it? He's made such a big deal out of wanting to find his dear Amber that he doesn't want us to know about all the other Ambers that he has hidden away. How many of them are there, Bray?" A mutter of laughter ran through the other rebels gathered about, but Bray didn't appear to be bothered by that. It didn't matter to him what the renegade Furies thought, or the various recruits that they had pressed into service. Salene smiled gently at him. He knew that she was worried. She knew about Amber and the baby thanks to KC, and it bothered her that Bray had failed to give her a straight answer about it all. He preferred not to talk about; she thought that he needed to do just that.

"Something wrong with your tongue tonight Bray?" Edging closer, Racha nudged him with a foot. "You're not going to be much fun if you just sit there and sulk."

"What would you rather I did? Flew into a rage?"

"Possibly. The last one was entertaining." The rebel leader reached out, catching hold of one of Bray's hands. "They've healed nicely. I thought they'd have been broken."

"Just bruised." Bray snatched the hand away, then realised what a mistake he had made. Nothing goaded Racha more than the attempt to put distance between them. Sure enough that warm, flirtatious smile came back.

"So come on, Bray. Tell us about the Independents. How many of them are you worried for? Are they especially pretty?"

"Shut up." Annoyed, even more so because he couldn't allow himself to get angry, Bray tried to keep his temper under control. Fighting Racha again would be a truly dreadful mistake, and he didn't want that kind of humiliation in front of an audience; but good sense wasn't especially easy. Nothing was ever easy with Racha, but maybe if he thought about other things instead - swimming, basketball, rowing; any of the things he had used to enjoy so much - he could keep himself from boiling over. He just simmered furiously instead.

"Shut up, Brigadier," corrected Racha, only half-joking. "So you don't mind if we wipe out the Independents when this is all over?"

"Huh?" That made most of them look up; the Furies in surprise, the few new recruits who were present in shock, and Bray, Salene and Ryan in horror. Only Ebony didn't react. She had learned to read Racha very well. He smirked.

"What? You didn't think I'd reward them for their rebellion did you? This is a Fury civil war. Civilians are allowed to side with me or with Silver. Fighting for themselves smacks of insurrection, and I don't know that I can allow that. We could herd them all into buildings and set fire to them, or get them all together in a nice empty space and machine gun them. You name it, it's been done before back in the old days. We're not breaking new ground here, you know."

"You're sick," Bray told him. Racha laughed.

"Sick of having nothing better to do than to mow down idiots who don't seem to know how to attack properly anymore. This is turning into a busted flush. I might just as well go after the Independents for a while. They'd probably put up a better fight than Silver's mob have been just lately."

"Depressing, isn't it." Archer never knew whether Racha was joking or being serious, but to him it didn't matter. This sounded like a good plan anyway. "I did hear that there's an old shopping mall that they're using as a headquarters of a kind. Didn't you once call yourself a Mall Rat, Bray? Maybe this mall would be the place to hit at first. Got any special friends there?"

"Leave the Mall alone." It was Ryan who reacted, less able to control himself than Bray, even if he was more placid these days than he had used to be. Archer looked over at him in surprise. Ryan so rarely spoke that it seemed odd to hear him do so now.

"So you're a Mall Rat too are you, Ryan? You've got your special friend here beside you though. Or do you have a few more in reserve back at this mall?"

"Leave him alone." Ebony stood up, stretching her lithe body. "If you must know, the Mall is a depressing, rundown place, filled with a more sorry bunch of losers even than the representatives you have here. A science geek, a pair of hippies, a would-be warrior who couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag, and a mother and baby who are no good to anybody. There was a bunch of children too, but it seems they gave up and ran out. A nest of vipers it isn't."

Racha laughed. "I see. So is it your baby, Bray?"

"No, it isn't." If the mention of babies wasn't enough to make Bray's temper rise, the thought of Brady, Trudy and Martin was. He glowered inwardly, and tried to keep his feelings to himself, but his voice had given him away. Racha raised an eyebrow, and his black eyes gleamed.

"Oh? Sure about that are you? So who is the father? Ryan here? Or this science geek? One of the hippies?"

"No." Bray turned to face him properly for the first time, and had to struggle to keep his eyes from giving away the full extent of his growing ire. Racha grinned on, mockery and amusement filling the handsome face. "Now shut the hell up. Some of us are trying to get some sleep."

"Sore spot," commented Archer, happy to join in with the teasing again. Tormenting a particular victim was always a good way to pass the time. Racha nodded.

"Probably feeling guilty. They like to pretend to be loyal to one woman at a time, these clean cut types. So what does Amber think of this other baby then, Bray?"

"I told you to shut up." He was on his feet before he could stop himself, hot and cold all at once, the emotions that always filled him when he thought about Martin confusing him now just as much as they always did. Ebony rolled her eyes.

"Don't be such a prat, Bray. Sit down."

"It doesn't get to you?" It was easier to turn on Ebony than to let himself get so angry with Racha. Ebony had been the target of his rage so often that it was just another argument for them. It made it easier to focus then. Easier to see through the sudden red mists. Ebony shrugged.

"He'd tell you not to be such a prat, too."

"You're a spoilsport, Ebony." A glimmer of interest showed in Racha's eyes. "So is the baby yours, and you gave it away?"

"Shut up." She spoke with no anger or enmity; just with the same sense of relaxed laziness that she often seemed to turn to everything else. "Now how about forgetting the teasing for a few minutes, and concentrating on something important?"

"Such as?" He didn't give a fig for her opinion, she knew that - but he had developed a grudging respect for her over the course of the war. Her abilities and courage, not to mention her ability to be impressively ruthless, had earned her that much. She winked, already reaching for her rifle, matching his flirtations of earlier as she gave him her studiedly casual answer.

"Such as maybe the tanks that are heading this way."

"Huh?" Archer leapt to his feet, head cocked on one side. In the distance, far in the distance, he thought that he could hear a rumbling, but he couldn't tell yet if it was getting closer. "No way. They'd never use tanks on us. Silver thinks he can win us back. He certainly doesn't want to risk hurting Racha."

"Happy to send grenades and fire bombs, and use automatic weaponry though, aren't they?" Bray trusted Ebony's judgement perhaps more than he trusted anybody else's. "Ebony...?"

"Oh, it's tanks. I'd say three of them at least. Heading this way. Listen."

"Yeah. I hear them." They all could now; a clearly audible rumble. "But Archer's right; they've never used tanks against us before. Not since the invasion. They've always been an option, but they haven't done it."

"Silver wouldn't." Racha was frowning, his eyes almost seeming to look inwardly now. He knew Silver. He knew the way he worked, planned, thought. Silver would never send tanks against him. And yet there was no denying that tanks were coming.

"What do we do?" Archer was gripping his rifle, but no matter how powerful it was, it was no more use against a tank than would be a peashooter or a child's catapult. The others were scrambling up, grabbing their guns, backing away, hoping for an order to retreat. Racha hesitated. Only Ebony still looked calm and collected, almost lazy. She had loved dropping her bombshell, he realised. Had loved throwing it so casually into the conversation.

"Get away from here," he said eventually. "It's too cramped. Get away from the weaker buildings, and find a place where we can launch a grenade attack. Somebody get the recruits out of the way. Damn it, what's going on?!"

"Maybe Tribe Fury got tired of losing?" suggested Ebony. He shook his head.

"No. I don't know. This is something weird. All the lousy planning, like Silver had lost it - then this? Something is very wrong."

"With Tribe Fury? Not really seeing any reason to worry." Ebony collected up a pair of grenades, already beginning to move out. Somebody was herding dangerously nervous recruits one way, and Archer was leading everybody else another. She could feel the ground vibrating now, very faintly through the soles of her shoes. Racha shot her a look, his expression showing no unpleasantness, but for once devoid of all feeling.

"Precision, tradition, discipline," he told her, his voice showing that it was something long learnt by heart. "We're a military organisation. Precision, tradition, discipline. It makes us predictable; or rather, it makes them predictable. That's part of the reason I'm on another side now. They don't have an original thought between them. Give them a leader and they'll follow any thought to the letter. Efficient as hell, and deadly with it. But still essentially predictable. Silver has rules of combat, even if you'd never notice it. I know them. I helped him set them."

"And I take it not using tanks on your own people is one of them?" They were running now, but of course Ebony still sounded casual, almost languorous.

"Yes." Racha tried to remember the last time that things had seemed normal in the enemy ranks. During the fighting leading up to his temporary departure from the front line to recover Bray, as far as he remembered. What could have happened that day to turn Tribe Fury into something so insane? "It's all worded more officiously than that of course, but that's the gist of it. We might be rebels now, but Silver would never see us that way. He'd never believe we'd really betray him, so he'd never send out tanks. I know him, damn it! Either he's gone mad, or somebody else has taken over, and both options don't exactly bode well. I wish I knew what was happening."

"I wouldn't worry about it now." They were running flat out, leaping broken walls and chunks of rubble, heading for one of the thing roads that a tank could not use.

"Now, tomorrow, next week. Got to worry about it sometime." He skidded to a halt and looked back, just in time to see a tank round the corner behind them. He had used them himself in the past, but he had never before stopped to think how inexorable they seemed. How alive, almost, like robots or monsters, tireless, following a scent. He swore softly.

"This way." Archer's voice, leading them all on, rose above the drone of the tanks. They followed him almost like sheep, following him into a tiny alley, out the other side, down another alley. Only then, when the walls seemed so close, when he felt so terribly hemmed in, did Racha stop to think about something. About the tanks coming from that particular direction, causing them to run this way. Their predictable response, of running to the one place where it seemed unlikely that the tanks could follow. Predictable. Just like Tribe Fury. He came to a sudden stop.

"It's a trap!" He knew it now, even though he had no idea where this new strategy was coming from. Not Silver. Not unless he had blown his mind. From somebody new, and imaginative, and ruthless in a way that even Silver had never been. More than ruthless. Brutal. "Get back! Get back!"

They took so long to respond. Archer, ever the soldier, ever the professional, went into retreat straight away. Racha doubted that he knew the reason why, but he did it anyway. The others though; he cursed them. Cursed them for having joined the rebels because they, like him, hated the slavishness, the mindless obedience, of Silver's loyal forces. That streak of independence; that characteristic that made them useful to him, was going to get them all killed now. He shouted at them again, and they started back towards him, slowly at first, then faster. Maybe they were going to make it after all. Maybe. And then he heard the rumble of new tanks, from a new direction, and knew that they weren't going to make it after all.

The tanks smashed through the walls of the alley from both sides, just as a smoke grenade came through the open far end. Smoke billowed up, blew sideways, curled around the tanks and the rubble and the scattering rebels. Racha saw some of them pinned under the falling walls, saw others disappearing beneath the tanks. The tanks didn't need to open fire. They just ploughed through it all. Those who weren't killed, weren't trapped, had nowhere they could go. They were lost to Racha as surely as the dead ones.

"Come on." It was Archer, back at his side. He looked unmoved, for nothing ever shook Archer. Ebony was there too; Luna, Morganstern, Lightning Joe, Ryan, Salene, Bray. A few others. They had lost probably ten men. Ten good men.

"Come on!" Archer was pushing him, something that he would never usually have dared to do. "We have to get away from here. Rejoin with the main body. Who the hell knows what else might be happening along the line right now?"

"Yeah." Racha raised his voice. "Fall out! Head for Station Six. Keep together for as long as you can." He started running then, casting just one glance back, and knowing that even that was one glance too many. The smoke hadn't cleared, and the tanks hadn't withdrawn. One of them turned its gun turret, pointing after the escaping gang, and for one unexpected moment his heart caught in his throat. The tank didn't fire. Someone somewhere must have told it not to. Cursing fate, as well as everything else he could think of that might be responsible for all of this, he ran on after the others. Something had gone very wrong somewhere. Something had changed. It was as if reality itself had seemed to shift. Racha didn't understand it at all, but he resented it as much as he was concerned by it. This was supposed to be his great game. His game. Something he had created and shaped. And how was the world supposed to play his game when somebody else suddenly changed all of the rules?

Chapter Text

Lex had felt better about keeping the new armoury to himself when he had seen the change that had come over Tribe Fury. At first he had worried that it was too dangerous to hold the new weapons back when the Independents were so poorly armed; but with Tribe Fury suddenly fighting like inexperienced novices, he was immediately reassured. They didn't seem to need the weapons now. Instead they were finding it easier to steal others, easier to fight back without even being armed in the first place. It was almost embarrassingly easy. He wondered at first if it might be some attempt to fool the rebels; to make them think that Tribe Fury was giving up, or was not as capable as they could be; but he had seen enough of them fall, apparently killed or badly injured, to be sure that this was no ruse. Craig seemed glad to lead his Badlanders in violent raids against Tribe Fury, in clashes that even Lex found unpleasantly vicious. This was no act. It couldn't be. Tribe Fury might be ruthless enough with their enemies, but to allow their own people to be killed just to lull the rebels into over-confidence was too much. Or so he thought at first; until the night when everything changed all over again.

It was when Bray and his companions were running from the tanks, although of course Lex knew nothing of that. When Racha's men were being killed or captured in the confined alleyway, caught between tumbling walls and advancing tanks, with smoke grenades hiding their fates from their retreating colleagues. Lex was sitting outside the Independents' latest headquarters, a small former police station that they had recently liberated from a group of Tribe Fury soldiers. It had been a pleasant day, which made a change from the recent weather, and the night was still warm. He was eating his first really decent meal in some weeks, again recently liberated from Tribe Fury, and watching KC and Chloe squabble like a couple in love. Tai-San caught the direction of his eyes, and smiled up at him.

"You noticed?!" she asked in a quiet voice. He smirked.

"I'm not sure that they have yet."

"They're very young still. Plenty of time for it to turn into anything yet." She laughed softly. "I'll bet your technique was better when you were KC's age."

"When I was KC's age I already had plenty of experience." He grinned lasciviously, and she just rolled her eyes. "Where's everybody else, anyway?"

"Luke and Jack are at the Mall. I don't think Jack has left there in several days now. He's hoping that with the way the fighting has been going lately, it'll all be over soon. He's planning to have plenty of electricity generators and water purifiers ready to help put things back to rights."

"Proper little city builder, huh." It was wonderful just to relax in her arms, he decided, and stretched luxuriously, just to show her how contented he was. She swatted the top of his head in response, just to show that she could stop him from being so comfortable any time she chose. "I suppose Luke's helping him? Weird. I always thought they hated each other."

"They did, when there was a woman in the way." Tai-San smiled like the old woman with decades of experience that she could so often appear to be. "But now they're friends. Just like you and Bray."

"Yeah." Lex tried not to laugh. Goodness knew they had worked together well enough in the past, but he still couldn't help thinking of his long term rival in distinctly antagonistic tones. And they had never even had a woman in the way. Tai-San made as though to swat at him again, but he dodged her easily, and still managed to look lazy.

"This is nice." She settled down into a more comfortable position beside him, and yawned happily. "It's been too long since we were able to relax properly."

"Yeah. Good to think that all those guns we found are just going to go to waste now."

"I was beginning to think that they would anyway. You really weren't planning to tell the Badlanders about them, were you."

"I don't know." He had thought about that a lot since finding the guns, and making the decision that they should at least wait before passing the news on. "Krishnan I trust. I think. I mean, he at least was happy to help me try to rescue Bray. Craig is just peculiar. I get the feeling he's hiding something. Maybe they all are - but at least Krishnan is easygoing with it."

"They speak quietly in dark places, and stop when they think people are walking too close." She frowned. "But they saved your life."

"They wanted me to get them an army together. I don't think they'd have bothered to rescue anybody else." He shrugged, really not sure quite how he felt about it all. "I don't know. Everything was moving so fast at first, and there was so much else to think about. I never stopped to think about who I was working with, and why. It's times like these when I think about Bray, and how he spent all that time finding out which tribe was which, back in the early days. He always seems to know something about everyone. Me, I was fighting, not talking."

"Which is your way. It suits you." She played with the necklace he wore, one that she had made to guard him against the dangers of war. It matched her own. "I suppose you think that he'd know whether or not we can trust the Badlanders?"

"I think he'd have an idea, yes. Craig obviously knows him."

"I see." She nodded slowly, as though thinking. "Then can I make a suggestion?"

"Sure, babe." Apparently he didn't think that he was going to have much interest in whatever it was that she was planning to suggest, so she poked him hard in the ribs to make sure he was awake.

"Ask." She said, with heavy emphasis. He frowned.

"Huh?"

"Lex, the streets are safer than they have been in weeks, and KC knows where Bray is now - or where he was a little while ago, anyway, which has got to be a start. We know he's tied up with the rebel side of Tribe Fury, so you'd have to be careful, but you're not telling me that the great Lex can't get to him?"

"The great Lex, huh?" He had to smile at that. "I didn't think. I mean - well yeah, I guess I could ask Bray. Maybe he knows something, at least. Then maybe I'd have a better idea where we stand. Are the Badlanders likely to play the game fair, or do we have to start watching our backs? That sort of thing."

"Then get started." She smiled at him, well aware that he didn't want to move. "No time like the present."

"I'm comfortable!" He sat up though, enjoying the warm night breeze on his face. "You wouldn't rather be doing something more interesting tonight, given how peaceful it seems to be?"

"Hardly."

"Well I like that!" He made a grab for her, but she rolled neatly away. Tai-San, he thought ruefully, had always possessed great agility and a beautiful turn of speed. He reached for her again, but she slapped his hand away this time, and jumped to her feet.

"Tai-San, babe... I'm not in the mood for funny games. It's not that kind of a night."

"Shut up, Lex." She was listening, and he saw the sudden seriousness of her expression.

"What?"

"I said to shut up!" She cocked her head on one side, then broke her own rule of silence with a sharp whisper. "Listen!"

"To what? I can't--" He broke off. "Sounds like... engines?"

"Powerful engines."

"Not a car though. Too heavy. Too rumbling."

"Too slow," added Tai-San. "Lex..."

"Bloody hell." He was on his feet too now, recognising the noise before she did. Grabbing the rifle he liked to keep with him, even though he had no more ammunition for it, he sounded the alarm as loudly as he could. "Tanks! Everybody up and out! Tanks!"

"Huh?" KC, who had been so engrossed in his apparently pointless argument with Chloe that he hadn't heard a thing, looked up. "What?"

"Tanks, you little idiot! Move!" Lex threw open the door of the police station and roared for the people inside. They came out in a slow, unconcerned wander, most of them rubbing sleep from their eyes. Only Michaels came with any speed. The mention of tanks was enough to make his eyes fill with panic, and his fists clench into little whitened balls. Tai-San put an arm around him.

"What do we do?" she asked. "Where do we go?" Lex shook his head.

"Don't know, don't care. Just get moving. Everybody!" The rumbling was louder now - they could all hear it. Some of them were finally beginning to get the message. "Move out! Split up a bit, but don't go alone. Pass the message on to anybody you see, no matter what side they're on, and keep moving! Avoid anywhere where you can be boxed in, or where the rubble will get you if they open fire. Understand?" He got his answer in a chorus of very uncertain mumblings, and rolled his eyes. "Just get going!"

"Lex..." KC was at his side, watching the others split up and move away. "Tanks?"

"You hear them, KC." Lex slung the rifle over his shoulder. "Come on. The five of us should stick together."

"Are we going back to the Mall?" asked Chloe. Tai-San shook her head.

"Not if there's a chance of leading anybody else back there, no. Come on." She broke into a jog, leading Michaels as gently, but as fast, as she could. He went with her mechanically, but his eyes were fixed upon the buildings behind them, beyond which the rumbling of engines was louder than ever.

"Lex..." began KC again. The older boy nodded. He could see the questions in KC's eyes, but he didn't know the answers to them. He just pushed the boy onwards, Chloe with him.

"I know, KC," was all that he said. It didn't make any sense. All this time with Tribe Fury showing the energy and ability of novices, and now tanks? Of course there was always the possibility that it was some of their own people, who had captured the things - but Lex didn't believe that. He trusted his instincts. Goodness knew they had seen him through more than enough trouble in the past to deserve that trust. Right now they were telling him to run. And so he ran.

And he was only just in time. As they dashed away from the police station; as they put one thin but concealing wall between them and the sound of the tanks, the tanks themselves came around the corner. There were three of them; not the ones that had taken part in the roust of the Fury rebels, but different ones. Just as big, just as heavy, just as unstoppable; inexorable chunks of metal that roared over the ground, cracking the tarmac of the road, and making the buildings vibrate. Lex heard a splintering sound, and knew that it was the fence around the police station. He hurried his little group on even faster, hearing the crunch of metal and wood, and thanking heaven that they had got away in time. How the hell had Tribe Fury known to find them there? There were so many buildings in the city. He didn't think that any of the Furies who had been posted at the police station had got away when the rebels had taken over. Craig had led the assault, and enemies tended not to get away when he was in command. Somebody had clearly passed the message along though, and Lex glowered about it in silence. Just as things had seemed to be going so well. Just as he had been getting the chance to relax.

The sound of a tank shell exploding shattered his thoughts just as they reached their angriest. Stone smashed. Tiles fell. He saw the wall behind him bulge and tremble, and he all but hurled KC and Chloe forward. They crashed into Tai-San and Michaels, and for a second they were all stumbling and trying not to tangle - then they were running on again, and behind them the police station was falling into dusty ruin. The tanks came on; through the rubble, crushing old furniture into unrecognisable, twisted ruins, pushing remorselessly on. Michaels whimpered, and Lex gave him a shove, pressuring the boy into keeping up the speed. Giving into fear wasn't going to do them any good. He glanced back, wondering how much of a barrier there still was between them and the tanks - and saw the first of them roll into view. It mounted the pile of rubble that had been the police station, its gun turret moving left and right for all the world like a head turning about to look. Lex mumbled inaudible, incomprehensible curses, complaints and half-prayers, and hurried the others on even faster still. He hoped none of them would look back. Panic would only make things worse. Then he remembered Michaels.

The boy was already looking back; was already grey, pasty, going into shock. Lex didn't blame him. He had seen kids damaged by fighting before, in the days of the Locos, and even though it wasn't anything that he could really understand, he knew what caused it. Not everybody was like him; he understood that much. Michaels was trembling now though, and his legs could no longer keep up the pace. He began to fall.

"What the-?" Turning to look at him, slowing her pace involuntarily, Tai-San looked back. She saw the tank, its gun pointing directly at them; saw the other two tanks beginning to roll into view. Her eyes met Lex's, widened in horror, and he flashed her a breathless, apologetic grin. There wasn't much left to do then. Catching Michaels up in his arms, he ran for cover, yelling at everybody to do the same, hurling himself over a wall, around a wall, through a doorway; no longer aware of direction. Behind him the tank fired, and a blossoming, blooming flower of flame and smoke erupted in the middle of all of the buildings, obliterating a wall; shaking the ground; showering Lex and Michaels with stone dust until neither of them could breathe. Lex ran on, the vibrations of the ground making his legs ache. He couldn't see where he was going, for his eyes were full of white dust, but he wasn't prepared to stop. Another shell exploded behind him, and the tanks roared on. He changed direction; heard KC from somewhere off to his right, encouraging Chloe onward. Another voice yelled, but it wasn't one that he recognised. He stumbled. Another shell came, and another, and he was running through falling stone then; just ahead of collapsing timbers; running for his life as everything began to fall apart around him. He threw himself through a glass-less window, dropping Michaels, dragging the boy on again so violently that he almost tore his arm from its socket. They were both choking, covered in stone dust, half deaf from the explosions and the destruction, and more than half blinded by the infernal dust. Hands caught hold of Lex, and he tried to fight them off; then heard KC's voice, and Chloe's, and let them pull at him. They hurried him on, as before he had hurried them, acting as his eyes and his ears as they ran onwards down the road. The sound of the tanks was fading now, and there were no more explosions. No more shells. No more stone dust. Lex could breathe again, and though his eyes were tearing fiercely, his vision was beginning to clear. He coughed.

"Everybody okay?" It was the most that he could manage to say, and even that didn't come easily. A murmur sounded out around him. Tai-San was holding him then, so tightly that it almost hurt. He wasn't about to complain.

"Thought we'd had it then." KC was shaking slightly, not meeting anybody's eyes. Chloe looked grey and ill. Lex nodded. There was no point making light of it. These were just children; but they were not the sort of children who needed to be protected all that much. Not anymore.

"Yeah." His voice felt hoarse, and every word hurt. "That was close."

"They've upped the stakes, haven't they." Tai-San's voice sounded faint. He didn't like to hear her so subdued.

"Yeah." It was all that he could say. There was no point in making denials that nobody would believe. "I think the rules are different now."

"You think they've attacked anywhere else tonight?" She was looking right into his eyes, but his vision was still too blurred to be entirely sure of the expression on her face. He nodded though. The question at least he could react to.

"I'd bet on it. No more playing it coy."

"Then do we break out our new armoury?"

"You think it'll do any good against tanks?" He began to push them all on again, not trusting in the tanks to give up that easily, even if it did sound as if they had done their work for tonight. "I don't know. Not yet. We have to find out what's going on first."

"And then?"

"I don't know, babe." He wanted to rub his eyes, but he knew that would only make things worse. He wanted the ringing in his ears to stop, and the taste of dust to go from his horribly dry mouth. Wanting didn't get anything done though. Speeding up, he kept pushing them all on, away from the scene of their close call. Away from the tanks and the rubble and the clouds of spreading dust and smoke. They had to join up with the main body of the Independents, wherever they all were. There was safety in numbers; safety where there were guards posted, and where there was a store of pilfered bombs that might just be some good against tanks. Might be some good. He didn't know. Frankly he had been hoping that he wouldn't have to find out. It didn't take a tactical expert to know that things had changed tonight though; that the fighting had shifted gear with a hell of a jolt. The store of bombs might just get some use after all. If they were all very lucky, the wretched things might even work.

Chapter Text

Once it had begun everything started to snowball. The Guardian enjoyed his new role immensely, and even though the rest of Tribe Fury didn't understand why Silver should have chosen to confide only in this virtual stranger, the results were such that soon they ceased to care. The long days of hopelessness and helplessness following Silver's lapse were over, and with the Guardian as go-between the orders came thick and fast once again. The rebels, both the former Furies and the Independents, didn't know what had hit them. Every day Tribe Fury pushed back a little harder. Every day the tanks rolled out, and even though they were never a main part of the action again, the threat of their presence was enough to scatter the enemy. Little pockets of resistance fell every day, trapped in ingenious pincer movements, or beaten into submission by less subtle means. Mostly it was just twos and threes who were taken, but the numbers mattered less than the fall in morale. Racha spent his days raving like a madman, furious that his great game had been turned to disaster, and apparently increasingly frantic with worry for Silver. The Badlanders kept taking out groups of their volunteers, only to return more often than not with their unit in tatters. The Badlanders themselves always managed to survive, Lex noticed with some dark amusement. It was just the volunteers who were killed, injured or captured. Not that it mattered. All of a sudden none of them seemed to have a chance anymore.

On the fifth day after he had taken command, the Guardian was in the war room, talking in a loud voice for the benefit of the guard outside the door, discussing tactics with Silver. Silver, as was rather the way of things now, had nothing at all to say on the matter, but the guard outside wasn't to know that, and the Guardian was good at holding one-sided conversations. He agreed loudly and enthusiastically with everything that the silent general failed to say, and even laughed dutifully once or twice, as though at jokes. All a part of the grand illusion, he thought to himself as he played out his performance. All a part of the necessary foolery. So far it seemed to be working well enough. Silver's orders not to be disturbed, unheard by all save the Guardian, just as with everything else that came from the war room these days, was followed scrupulously. Everything that Silver said was obeyed in such a manner, which of course made things much easier for the Guardian. Not for the Furies were questions about the sudden change in tactics; about the sudden loss of military precision. About the sudden chaos. Instead the colour-coded colonels who came in every day to get their orders nodded smartly, and marched away to carry the orders out. They sent their respective units out in wide, grand, sweeping manoeuvres; in apparently insane jabbing attacks that somehow always came off; in rowdy, mob-handed routs that were undeniably a contrast to anything that Silver had ever ordered before. And still they asked no questions. The Guardian felt sure that he could have them all running down the street yelling in praise of Zoot if he felt inclined to try it; but he didn't. Not yet. For now none save the Fury leaders knew of his involvement, and he was content to keep it that way.

Bray and the others were at a loss to understand any of it. Caught between the newly ferocious Tribe Fury, and a leader of their own who was now in a permanent rage, they were without real leadership themselves. Archer took over, in his role as deputy, but his rigid mind was completely incapable of keeping up with whatever mercurial madman now governed Tribe Fury. His conventional plans and manoeuvres were completely outclassed, and each patrol that went out, each unit that struggled on the front line, took a constant battering. Only their almost endless supply of ammunition kept them fighting, and even then it was only a case of fighting back when and where they could, almost always on the enemy's terms. Racha grew more and more violent, ordering sudden, insane sorties with the hotel as the objective, none of which came to anything in the end. The sentries were back up on the roofs, and travel from street to street was once more almost impossible. The Guardian, happily ensconced in his war room, knew nothing of Racha's anger, or Lex's growing depression. He wouldn't have cared anyway. All he was interested in was the next stage of his plan. The next step towards getting the city under his control once again. The way it was supposed to be.

The problem with a war of this sort, as he knew only too well from his schooling as well as from his own recent experiences, was that it could go on almost forever. Even with sentries on the roof, and tanks patrolling the streets, there would still always be ways for people to get about. It might take them time to find the ways; to find the desperation and the determination that were necessary, but they would get there in the end. They would fight back, because that was what people did when they were under attack. When their friends and colleagues were dying, when their own lives were threatened, when their homes were in danger. The last thing that the Guardian wanted was a guerrilla war. The last one had gone too badly for him, and it bothered him that the architects of it - so far as he knew - were still alive out there somewhere. He hadn't seen their bodies, so he didn't believe that they were dead; and that meant that they were still dangerous. Bray, Ebony, Lex. Jack, who had been sent away from the city as a dangerous influence, but had managed to return. Luke, who had betrayed the Guardian once before. Any number of former Fury soldiers who had the potential - to say nothing of the firepower - to make this war last indefinitely, if they could only find the foxholes, and the safe pathways, and the proper degree of outrage. Something had to be done to prevent that. To scupper the Independents, to clip the rebel Furies' wings. To prevent the guerrilla war from ever beginning. In that way, he felt sure, he could have the entire city under his command in a matter of days. Silver, for all his efficiency, his skill, and his undoubted intellect, had been months away from being able to make that claim. The Guardian had had his own plans in place all along.

It began with a young girl of no more than eleven or twelve; a pretty, waif-like creature with frizzy hair and an angelic smile, who knocked on the door of Amber and Sasha's hotel room. They let her in, surprised to see her, for in all the time that they had been at the hotel they had seen no one but the boy who replenished their water daily, and their food stores once a week. The girl entered the room shyly, and introduced herself as Megan. Silver had asked to see the two new recruits, she said, and she had been detailed to keep an eye on the baby for them whilst they were downstairs. Amber wanted to refuse, but she knew that there wasn't really much chance of that. What Silver said went, and she had agreed to that, implicitly, when she had entered the hotel.

"We'll be back before you know it," claimed Sasha, and Amber nodded her head unwillingly.

"Yeah."

"The baby will be fine." Megan was smiling, waggling her fingers at the little boy, who was far too young to really care about her efforts. "I look after lots of them. There are always babies in the city, and most of them come under Tribe Fury's domain these days. Don't worry about him."

"It'll probably only be for a few minutes," pointed out Sasha. Amber nodded again.

"I know. I've just never been anywhere without him before." She held him for a second longer, feeling his familiar shape and weight, then sighed and handed him over. Megan beamed.

"He's beautiful. Don't worry, you'll be back soon. The Lord General never sees anybody for very long."

"And you'll be here when we get back?" asked Sasha. Megan nodded her frizzy head.

"Right here waiting for you." She waved Eden's little hand in farewell, and Amber smiled regretfully. It was several moments before Sasha could coax her from the room. They both looked back at the baby before the door shut, but everything seemed fine. Everything looked as it should be.

If Megan was phase one, phase two took place elsewhere in the city. A small boy named Eric, who had been playing in the Mall with the other members of Trudy's increasingly large crèche, slipped out during one of the rowdy games. Nobody saw him leave, and nobody saw him clamber out of the building, through one of the secret entrances that he saw Lex and the others use almost daily.

In another part of the Mall, Jack and Luke were arguing. It was a regular occurrence, though these days their fights were not the angry, tense kind that they had been in the past. Their previous animosity, a part of their rivalry over Ellie, had disintegrated in the need for co-operation, and in the face of the gradual, mutual understanding that they had reached. Ellie was gone, and there was far too much else to think about these days than old rivalries and older girlfriends.

Today the argument was about copper wiring, which Jack thought was a perfectly reasonable thing to argue about, and Luke thought was faintly absurd. They had one and a half feet of the stuff, and for Jack to finish building another wind powered battery charger, they needed at least another four inches. Luke wanted to try using something else, Jack was determined to go out and find exactly what they needed, and before very many minutes had gone by they were arguing energetically about who was right, where they could find the extra copper wiring, and whether or not it would be feasible to try some kind of substitute. The argument ended the same way their arguments always ended; with Luke laughing, Jack looking affronted, and Luke producing some of the dwindling supply of chocolate that he kept for that express purpose. They shared it, Jack thought wistfully of Dal, and before very many minutes were up they were ready to go back to work again.

"Did you hear something?" Looking up from the workbench, Luke cocked his head on one side. Jack nodded.

"Sounded like somebody coming in. Bit early for Lex though."

"Lex hasn't been in for two days. I doubt he'll come in today. You know the reason why." Luke crept over to the door of Jack's workroom and peered out. After a moment Jack joined him.

"Because of Tribe Fury regaining the initiative? Just when we thought we were getting somewhere. Bloody typical." Jack could see nothing of interest going on outside the workshop, so he turned back to his bench and sat down. "Shame there aren't more of us. And that we don't have more weapons."

"Well there's two more of us here who could be out there helping fight," pointed out Luke. Jack didn't bother answering. Neither of them was the gun-toting type, and hoped to stay that way for as long as possible.

Get back over here," he said instead, holding out a wrench for the other boy to take. "I need a hand with this--" He broke off. "Luke, are you listening?"

"Ssh." Luke's blue-haired head was low now, as though he were peering at something of great interest, and wished to remain unseen himself. He gestured wildly with one hand, and Jack crept over to join him.

"What is it?" he asked. Luke hushed him with more frantic gesturing, then pointed. When Jack looked past him to see what was going on beyond their little room, he saw that Luke's face was deathly white, and that his fingers, now gripping the wall edge, were beginning to tremble. Then Jack saw what he was looking at, and he understood the reason why.

There were twelve teenagers in the lobby of the Mall, led by a small boy whom Jack recognised immediately. Gary? Larry? He couldn't remember, but he knew that the child was one of Trudy's young charges. He looked different now though, for before he had been dressed in ordinary clothes - and now he was wearing the deep blue robe of a member of the Chosen. The twelve teenagers around him were dressed the same way, their feet in uniform sandals, the two tallest amongst them sporting hair dyed the same colour as Luke's. Jack tried to swallow, but found that he couldn't.

"The Chosen," he hissed in the end, and sat down heavily on the floor. "What do we do?"

"What can we do?" The other boy couldn't move; couldn't stop staring at the twelve new arrivals as they began to spread out around the lobby. "They're taking over, Jack. I don't know why, but they're here to take over."

"The children." Jack's head dropped into his hands. "Think about it! If they can hold this place, with all those kids here, then the tribes that those kids belong to will do anything that the Chosen want. Anything. We have to--"

"What?" At last able to tear his eyes away from the sight of the Chosen, Luke managed to walk a few shaky steps away from the door. "They'll kill us without a thought! They'll certainly kill me, and they'd have no reason to keep you alive. Jack, there's nothing we can do. We can't get word to Trudy, and even if we could, what's she going to do? Evacuate all the kids in the next minute?"

"I guess not." Jack looked up at his friend, seeing in the troubled eyes that Luke had never really got over whatever horrors the Chosen had thrown his way. "But we've got to do something!"

"That kid. Larry is it? He knows about us. He knows we work in here, and he'll tell them. We have to hide."

"That's no problem. There's the air duct. We can get up into the attic or something. But then what?"

"I don't know, Jack." Luke was trying not to shake, but couldn't seem to manage it. He was thinking of the Guardian. If the Chosen were here, then the Guardian was still alive. He had been consoling himself for so long with the thought that his old tormentor was gone, that now he found he could barely consider the possibility he was not. He hated the Chosen. He hated the Guardian. He hated what he had been amongst them, what they had done to him, and everything that they stood for. He wanted to fight them off; all these twelve new arrivals in their pristine blue robes and close-shorn heads. But he couldn't stop the powerful shivers that threatened to make his teeth chatter loudly enough to give him away. He didn't resist when Jack pulled him over to the air vent. He was shaking too much to put up a fight. By the time Larry - Harry? Barry? Jack still couldn't remember - had led the Chosen into the workshop, there was no sign that Jack and Luke had recently been there. Larry/Harry/Barry didn't care. For all he knew they had gone outside, in which case they had no hope of getting back in. The Mall was secure. Phase two of the Guardian's plan was complete, and back at the hotel the Guardian himself was preparing to begin phase three. It was by no means the most complicated, but he had an idea that it might be his favourite one yet.

The guard was outside the door of the war room, just as he always was. Sasha was certain it was the same one who had been there the day Silver had given his little pep talk about training and initiations, and the chance of one day being awarded full membership of Tribe Fury. He wondered if it was always this one guard on duty, and if he was ever relieved by anybody else. He offered the guard a cheery smile, which went completely ignored, then shrugged and knocked loudly on the door.

"You're to go straight in," announced the guard, his eyes conveying the clear message that he would rather not be admitting the pair at all. Rather put off by the glare, Sasha dragged his smile out for another nervous showing.

"Is he in a good mood?" he asked, nodding towards the door - or more precisely the Fury leader on the other side of it. The guard scowled.

"Who? Don't know what's going on anymore. Nobody's seen Silver since you did that last day. Everything's nuts, and you didn't hear it from me." He shouldered his rifle, doing his best to swallow his doubts and look professional. "Now get in there. Orders are, you go straight in."

"Then we'll go straight in." Amber pushed the door open, conscious of the fact that the guard immediately turned his back to them, the door, and whatever was beyond it. She walked on through, rather wishing that she could stay outside with the guard. She had no wish to listen to Silver's meanderings, especially when her young son was begin cared for by a complete stranger, no matter how efficient and apparently sweet.

The room was different to the last time. The books of histories and the military biographies; the old accounts of battle tactics written by ancient commanders and generals, were stacked now at one side of the room, and the diagrams of military manoeuvres had gone. The maps were still there though; a mad, colourful jumble now, of arrows, and symbols and scrawled handwriting. Piles of little toy soldiers lay here and there, some smouldering gently from where they had recently been set on fire. There was no sign of Silver.

"Hello?" Sasha walked further into the room, looking expectantly behind tables, and even underneath one. "General?"

"In the stationary cupboard," a voice answered him, although it didn't sound like Silver's voice. Amber thought that she recognised it, but she was thinking about Silver, and didn't make any kind of connection.

"General--" she began, but the cupboard door swung open then, and she saw, not the tall and impressive figure of Silver, with his dyed hair and glittering smile, but the arrogant blond she had hoped never to see again. The Guardian, who had kidnapped her, tried to blow up the Mall, tried to have Bray burned at the stake. Her eyes narrowed.

"What are you doing here?" Her voice was like ice. Sasha was rather taken aback.

"You two know each other?" he asked. The Guardian laughed, and walked forward a few places to size this stranger up.

"They tell me you're called Sasha," he commented, with just the right note of laziness in his voice to suggest that he was above mere introductions, and mere mortals like Sasha. "You're what? Her new love? Because frankly, Amber, this isn't going to be nearly so much fun if you and Bray aren't the item you used to be, and it would be a shame to have to kill you after you presumably went to so much trouble to surrender."

"She and Bray are still together," put in Sasha, before Amber could come back with one of her ill-timed attempts to be defiant. She glared at him furiously, and the Guardian laughed.

"You're probably wondering what you're doing here," he said at last, finally tiring of the sound of his own amusement. Amber's eyes spat sparks.

"I'm wondering what you're doing here. Where's Silver?"

"Silver? Oh he had to pop out for a minute or two. I'm sure he'll be very sorry that you missed him. Anyway I speak for him these days, so it doesn't much matter."

"And who exactly are you?" asked Sasha, taking advantage of his first chance to get a word in edgewise. The Guardian quirked a blond eyebrow.

"I am the Guardian," he announced, as though it should mean something to everybody. "Leader of the Chosen, and high priest to Zoot."

"Zoot?" Sasha looked blank for a moment, then nodded. "Oh, right. The one that Ebony used to work with. Bray's brother, yeah? Why does he need a high priest?"

"You'll learn. If you survive, you'll learn." With an effort the Guardian controlled his temper. "My friends, as I said, you're probably wondering why you're here."

"We weren't wondering, and don't call us that." Amber folded her arms, wishing that they didn't feel so empty. She wanted to get back to Eden, and she didn't want to have to deal with this madman any longer. He unnerved her greatly, and she wanted to know what he was up to. What he was planning. The Guardian was always planning something, and it was never of any good to anybody. She wanted to run away from this place, for if the Guardian was mixed up in Tribe Fury, there was sure to be great danger for all of them now. The Guardian smiled indulgently at her, and her blood boiled. How dare he patronise her.

"You're here because I've decided to bring this war to an end," he said, his voice even. "I plan to send a force up against the idiots still fighting us, and you, Amber, are going to be a big part of that. I've already got steps underway to bring the Independents under my control. My next move is against the breakaway section of Tribe Fury."

"What makes you think I'll help you?" Her voice dripping with hatred, Amber was thinking quite seriously about trying to fight the Guardian here and now. He laughed at her.

"Because, my dear associate, you just left your baby in the care of one of my most dutiful young initiates, and quite simply if you ever want to see the child again, you'll do exactly what I say. Is that clear?"

"You're lying." She had gone very pale, knowing that he was perfectly likely to have set such a thing up. He smirked maliciously.

"Want to take the risk? I have a little radio here, and I can have an order with Megan before you can get past the guard on the door just out there. You'll never see your baby again, and I'll see that he - it is a he, isn't it? - gets to grow up the way a child of Zoot's family should. As a proper little member of the Chosen. So what do you say, Amber?"

"I say that you're an untrustworthy creep with an ego the size of Jupiter." Amber tried to keep from trembling, and Sasha took her arm.

"We'll do it," he said, not sure that Amber could bring herself to say the same thing. The Guardian grinned.

"Good. Because really you know, Amber, you're a very important part of my plan. You're going to get the rebels for me. More precisely, you're going to get Bray for me. I won't have Zoot's brother complicating matters again, acting as a symbol; and I won't have these blasted rebels causing trouble either. Kill him or bring him in, I don't care, but he's out there at the heart of all this rebellion nonsense, and I'd rather have him here with me. Or dead. The choice is yours. So you go out there, you get them to take you in, and then you do what needs to be done to keep your baby. And if that means killing every single one of the rebels' inner circle, you'll do it." He folded his white robed arms and smiled triumphantly at Amber. "Well? What do you say?"

"You're a cold, heartless bastard." He couldn't really want her to do all of that. She couldn't do any of it. Be a traitor, use her identity to get at Bray and the others. Betray them to the Guardian. Kill them. She couldn't do it. And yet if she didn't... Her arms felt empty again. Horribly, painfully empty. The Guardian meant what he said, she knew. She could see no way as yet to rescue Eden. No way to stop the Guardian from carrying out his threat to have the child spirited away. She could try to attack the Guardian, but he was too much of a fanatic to be stopped by that. Besides; she was under no illusions about her ability to come out on top if it came to a fight. The Guardian was twice her size, and was probably armed. Even with Sasha to help her she would never be able to win. Her shoulders slumped. What the hell else could she do but agree, and hope that some way to get out of all of this would present itself later? Gripping Sasha's arm so tightly that she all but cut off the blood flow, she nodded her head. It felt as if it weighed several tonnes, and her muscles were so tense that the effort of nodding made her neck stiff and painful. She didn't look at the Guardian. Didn't look at Sasha, or the maps, or the melted, smouldering toy soldiers. She stared at the floor, and hoped that she wouldn't give the Guardian the satisfaction of seeing her cry. The Guardian, however, couldn't have looked more smug if she had broken down in tears at his feet. He had been fairly sure that he was going to enjoy phase three. He hadn't been disappointed. Now he just had to sit back and wait for phase four. That was to be his most favourite of all.

Because phase four was the end of everything.

Chapter Text

The rain was pounding on the roof of the shelter, and Lex could no longer hear the crying of the two small boys sitting huddled by the door. The only two small boys left free, so far as he knew. Every other child in the city was a prisoner somewhere, either because of their enforced loyalty to Tribe Fury, or because they had been sheltering in the Mall when it had been overrun. He couldn't believe how easily it had happened; but happened it had. He had gone there himself, as usual, to talk with Luke and Jack and visit with Trudy, for she hated to be so isolated from events in the city outside. He had met with barricades, and shouted messages from figures in unmistakable blue robes. The Chosen had taken the Mall, and with it the children of the city; the children of the free tribes who had agreed to stand together against Tribe Fury. He wasn't sure yet if there was any connection; why would Tribe Fury be working with the Chosen? But it had a suspicious air to it that he couldn't deny, and it weighed heavily upon his mind. His hoped for army of Independents sat around him now - or the hardiest of them did. The others had wandered off, one by one, to think by themselves. He knew what they were thinking, and he supposed that he didn't really blame them. He didn't have any younger brothers or sisters; any children of his own. He didn't know how he would feel if he did, and they were taken hostage. He could only think of the feelings he had begun to experience for the baby that had so nearly been his, but had never been born. From that it wasn't hard to realise that his army was lost. The Independents would not risk the lives of their younger brethren. He couldn't ask them to.

So here they sat, listening to the rain, no longer bothering to listen to each other. The metal roof amplified every drop, causing each sound to echo and re-echo, and he was barely aware of Tai-San's hand gently gripping his. She had been speaking to him earlier, talking of faith, and trusting in things to come out right in the end, but he hadn't found any of it particularly reassuring. The situation had been made clear by the guards at the Mall; the Independents were to lay down their arms - if they had any - and sit out any further action. They were to fight no longer, or their loved ones would die. It was all simple enough.

"We should have killed the Guardian." Lex spoke softly, and the rain smothered his words before anybody but Tai-San could hear them. "We had so many opportunities. We could have killed him so many times." His wife's hand tightened its hold upon his for just a moment. "I know." He spoke even more softly now. "I know you always hoped you could reach him. But if he's behind this... if Tribe Fury have joined with him for some reason... You must see how crazy it all is. He's going to get the city again. Take over again. He nearly killed everybody the last time. The man's insane."

"Yes." She leaned closer, and rested her head against him. "But then aren't they all? Out there - Tribe Fury, the Chosen. All of them? They've lost everything. All their humanity, all their connection to the harmony of the universe. It's not healthy, for any of us."

"Yeah." He smiled fondly at her. "Harmony. Sure."

"These things are important, Lex. We are all connected to each other. We are all a part of each other. Tribe Fury kill others, and in the process kill a part of themselves. That's why it would have been wrong for us to have killed the Guardian. You know that, right?"

"I know that the city's gone nuts, and that everybody is killing each other. I don't see why I should sit on the sidelines and let it all go on, if killing one man will stop it." He smiled at her, gently enough. "But yeah, I know. Killing is wrong. In an ideal world. This ain't an ideal world, babe."

"Lex?" It was Chloe, speaking up from her position nearby. She and KC had been playing a half-hearted game of pick-up-sticks with Michaels, watched by a morose Pride. Lex didn't look up. "Lex? Are we going to have to surrender?"

"Not in this lifetime." He still didn't look up. KC frowned.

"What about Trudy and Brady?"

"What about them? We can't get them out. We can't surrender. If we do, the Chosen will kill us all. They know us. They'd never let us live. The Guardian has tried to kill most of us at some time, and it's not like he doesn't know who we are. At least we know that Brady won't be in any danger from them."

"I suppose." Chloe tossed her sticks aside, effectively ending the game. "Nobody else is going to fight anymore though, are they. Not until we can free the Mall."

"Which is going to be tough. It's easily defended." It took real effort from Pride to draw himself into the conversation. He had been aloof for a long time, lost in his own deep thoughts. In many ways Pride saw the world the way that Tai-San did, and he disapproved strongly of the Chosen, and their method of securing the co-operation of the Independents. It was not right to hurt the innocent just in order to achieve a goal. Lex nodded.

"That's why we chose it as a base. And we've only made it harder to break into since then. They're in the best place."

"But we do have a whole lot of weapons," pointed out KC. Lex nodded.

"Yeah. True. So we bust in there with guns and grenades, and kill all the hostages. Great plan. We need something better than that."

"We need Bray." Chloe looked faintly embarrassed when everybody turned to look at her. "Well they'd let him in, wouldn't they. Bray could walk in there, because he's the one that the Chosen want more than any of the rest of us. Then maybe he could do something. Like..." She was fast running out of inspiration. "Like use knockout gas or something."

"Yeah. Great idea, Chlo." KC grinned teasingly at her, and she abandoned her grown up façade to glare at him, only just stopping short of sticking out her tongue.

"Well it was only a suggestion. I just think he could get them to let him in there, that's all."

"She's right." Tai-San still spoke softly, and the rain did its best to drown out her voice. "I think they would let Bray in. It would probably only be to kill him, immediately or as part of yet another show execution... But they would at least let him in. I'm not sure how we could use that to our advantage, though."

"Especially since we don't know how to get to Bray. I was on the verge of going when all hell broke loose. Now I don't know how I could get through." Lex kicked at a loose piece of flooring, and watched it skid away to send the sticks from the game scattering far and wide. "All those tanks, all those soldiers. It's manic. I suppose he's still alive?"

"We have to assume so, until we learn otherwise. Optimism is more than merely feeling good, Lex. It's a way of shaping the world around you through positive thought." Tai-San frowned. "There has to be a way to find him. Doesn't there? Some way through all of the fighting. The underground tunnels..."

"The underground tunnels are known by the Guardian. I don't think it would be a great idea to use them." Pride was staring into space as he thought, his eyes fixed on inward images of the Mall, and the many terrified children who were trapped there. Of Trudy, whose life would always be at risk when the Chosen were around, and of the fears she must have for the daughter they had always wanted to take from her. "Besides, a lot of them might no longer be safe. All of these explosions, and the tanks, must have weakened their structure. The older ones will be fine still, but the ones that were closer to the surface and made more recently can't be trusted."

"Maybe we don't need to use them anyway. The way everything's been going lately, most of the fighting has just turned to hiding. Everybody is keeping their heads down. We might be able to sneak out." Having always had great faith in his ability to sneak his way around the city, no matter what the dangers going on around him, KC saw no reason to change strategies now. "They're probably not expecting anybody to try walking around out there just now. Have to be nuts to try, wouldn't you."

"Yeah." Lex couldn't deny that. After the guns and bombs and tank fire, who honestly would want to wander around in the city streets? Sometimes it seemed a wonder that the buildings still stood upright, and hadn't all come crashing to the ground. Still, if they had to go out there, they had to go out there. Whether it was to find Bray or not, they were going to have to risk an excursion sooner or later. They were out of food; they had to get some more from somewhere. They also had to do something about the Mall. Whether it was an all out strike or the plan that Chloe had suggested, they had to try something. Leaving the Chosen in control of the place was an insult to all of them.

"The Badlanders still get about, don't they." Michaels, who rarely offered anything to a conversation, unless it was a comment on Fury politics and strategy, looked up now. "They're out there now. Went out to look for food for everybody, or something. If they can get out there, then maybe the rest of us can."

"The Badlanders are sneaky sods." Lex's opinion of his allies grew lower every day, without him ever quite understanding why. "I know that Craig has a bullet-proof jacket, and probably the others do too. They've got a whole arsenal they've been keeping to themselves, too. I've seen it." He smiled faintly. "It's nothing like the size of ours, but at least they're getting to use theirs."

"We'll get our chance." Pride had no enthusiasm in the idea of fighting with such weapons, but he would always do what was necessary, at least whilst he was trapped here in the city. "Not until the Mall is free though. We can't risk all those lives. Maybe we can use some of the guns to help free it, but it would better to be a little more subtle than that. Afterwards, when we've got those kids out, we can break out the guns and-"

"And get mowed down by Tribe Fury." Michaels managed a little smile. "Sorry."

"If you'd rather make a run for it, you're welcome to try," suggested KC. Michaels shook his head though.

"No. If you want to go out there and try to rescue this friend of yours, and if you think that'll help to free the Mall, and all those kids, and then give us a chance to fight back, I'll help you. It's about time I stood up for myself. I've been keeping my head down all this time, and everything's just been getting worse and worse. The Fury civil war, then all those attacks, when they brought the tanks out against us - and now these Chosen people joining in. It really is time to fight, isn't it." He looked terrified, and his voice carried a definite tremor. "I just don't feel terribly confident, that's all."

"Confidence isn't always a good thing." Tai-San smiled gently at him. "Sometimes it leads us to do things that it is not sensible to attempt." She sighed, looking oddly drawn and tired. "But this time, perhaps we all need a little more confidence. Whatever happens, it's going to take all of us to really make a difference now. There can be no more of us splitting up; of Lex going off on his own, or KC and Chloe doing their own thing. We must all work together."

"That's true." Lex sounded more thoughtful than usual. "I have a nasty feeling that if a couple of us go off somewhere to get Bray, then by the time we get back the rest of you will have gone. There are troops going by here making swoops every day, and every day they get a little bit closer. The tanks might have been withdrawn again, but the guns shoot just as straight. None of the others here will stand up and fight. They haven't run out on us yet, but they soon will do." His eyes travelled to the two small boys by the door. They were still crying, though slowly and with not so much force as before. He tried to remember why they were here, and why they hadn't been left in the Mall, but couldn't for the life of him recall who they were. New arrivals who hadn't yet been delivered into Trudy's care? Young kids who had refused to be hidden away out of the line of fire? They didn't look like the latter, with their tears and desperate clinging to one another. It probably didn't matter, all things considered. Whoever they were they would undoubtedly stay there for another day or two, increasingly despondent, until the constant gunfire, the lack of food and the bad weather got to them just that little bit too much and they surrendered. Either that or until Tribe Fury or the Chosen came through and dragged them away. He didn't care; couldn't care. Lex had himself, his wife, his friends, and a Mall full of children to think about, as well as a city to free. Sometimes the civilians just had to take care of themselves.

"We're really going to go looking for Bray then?" Chloe sounded somewhere between delighted and amazed. It had, after all, been more or less her own suggestion. Lex made an unhappy face. Bray. It always had to boil down to Bray. He was the one that the others all seemed to want leading them; he was the one who seemed to be everybody's great hope. It was Bray who could get into the Mall, because it was Bray that the Chosen wanted. Because it was Bray who the city saw as the great rebel. Because it was Bray who everybody knew. All, so far as Lex could see, because it had been Bray who had been amongst the first to be orphaned by the Virus, and Bray who had managed to avoid the government round ups of waifs and strays; who had refused to answer the call up to be trained by the military; who had the fortune - good or bad - to have been the brother of Zoot. It was all luck; and none of it seemed at all fair to Lex. He had never quite learned to live with it.

"Yeah, I guess we're going after Bray," he said in the end. As much as anything else, it was a start. It would increase their little band by at least one; it would reunite them, and possibly make them all a little more optimistic. The Mall Rats had been divided for too long; he only wished that Jack could be back with them, instead of trapped in the Mall alongside Trudy. "But listen; we stick together, we move together, and you all take orders. We might get all the way across the city without running into trouble. We might not see a soul, and everything might go like clockwork. But we also might get shot dead before we make it three feet. So you've got to move fast, and you've got to move when I tell you to move. Got that?" There was an ambiguous mumble in answer, and he scowled. "You people could learn a thing or two from Tribe Fury and the Chosen. Discipline."

"We'll do as we're told." KC sounded faintly sullen. He had never liked being ordered around. The expression on Pride's face said that he liked it even less so. "But you know there's not always time for orders out there, Lex. Sometimes we have to act on instinct."

"Instinct I'm happy with. But not when it splits us up." Lex couldn't forget the night that he and Pride had been separated from Ebony and Bray by a Fury attack. They had run their different ways, and they had been apart ever since, consequently weakened in their attempts to fight back. "We stick together. From here on in, we're a team. Us, and Bray when we can get him. Together we fight Tribe Fury. Together we fight the Chosen."

"Together we die in some firefight," put in Pride. Lex glared at him.

"Yeah, maybe. Better than dying separately, and trapped like rats, right?"

"I guess." Pride stood up, shouldering the battered rifle he had stolen from a Fury patrol several weeks before. It only had a few more shots to its name, but it was better than nothing, at least until Lex finally gave the okay to start using the weapons he had found in Danni's old home. "Then I say we go now. Don't sit around and let the worry start to settle in, so we wind up not going at all. We've got no stores to gather, we're holding all the weapons we've got. Let's just go."

"The weather is in our favour," agreed Lex. "The visibility is down, even if the rain has got less heavy. It won't get properly dark for a few more hours yet, but the sun's already long gone. I doubt it'll be back before sundown."

"We're just going to go?" Michaels looked horribly young and pale, and Lex almost had doubts about taking him along. If the kid froze up again, in the face of gunfire and Fury soldiers, they might all be in trouble; but they couldn't really leave him behind. It wouldn't be fair, especially since they all knew what was likely to happen to the others sitting around in this half-hearted shelter. He nodded, and stood up to stand alongside Pride.

"Yeah. We're just going to go. Right Tai-San?"

"There is no time like the present." Usually she might have liked a few moments to prepare, and perhaps to meditate. To try to generate some positive thought energy, perhaps, so as to do her best to ensure that they had as great a chance of success as possible. Now she just felt that it was better to get moving; better for them all to feel that they were accomplishing something. The last few days had been a time of upset, disappointment, and of general demoralisation. It would be good to be doing something. Lex nodded at her.

"Then there's not much sense in us hanging around, is there." He didn't waste any time in leading them to the door, and stood there for just a moment, looking out into the rain lashed street. The two small boys looked up at him, their tear-swollen eyes making them seem especially pitiful to his jaded mind. He tried to offer them the sort of smile that grown men had once offered him when he was a very small boy, but it had no better effect on them than it had used to have upon him. Instead the boys pressed closer together, and looked even less cheerful than before.

"Are you going?" one of them asked. He looked about eight, and had black hair decorated with bleach in a diamond pattern that matched the yellow and white diamonds both boys bore painted on their faces. Lex shrugged.

"For a bit. Got to find us some food. You're hungry, right?"

"Right." The second boy nodded miserably. "You won't be long?"

"I sure hope not, kid." Lex managed a more meaningful smile this time. "Keep your heads down, and we'll be back with some stores as soon as we can manage it, okay?"

"Okay." It was the first boy's turn with the tongue again. He had unnerving eyes, thought Lex. Almost entirely black, with no discernible boundary between iris and pupil. With the red veining visible in their whites, they looked peculiar. Almost inhuman. Lex could feel those eyes on him long after he had left the building, leading his troops out into the rain.

"We're not planning to be long?" echoed Chloe, rather confused. "But it could take us days to find Bray. We're not going to keep going back there are we?"

"No." Lex didn't look back at her or vary in speed as he hurried them all on through the wet streets. He could hear gunfire, but he hadn't seen anybody yet. That was no reason to slow up though, or to relax. Tribe Fury seemed to be at their most dangerous when they couldn't actually be seen. "We're not going back there. Maybe not ever. I just didn't want to say that. I don't trust anybody, even little kids. And besides, I didn't want anybody volunteering to come with us if they heard where we're really going. It's just us from now on. Just people we know we can trust, until we're in a much better position to take risks."

"We're being suspicious of children who aren't even as tall as your rifles now?" Tai-San sounded disapproving, even if her eyes did show that she understood Lex's attitude. Still he didn't look back.

"Do you know how many lives might be depending on us now, Tai-San? We're suspicious of everybody, until the Mall's free and the city's free, and the Chosen are meeting their god in person. Anybody has a problem with that, I'd tell them to get lost, but we need everybody we've got right now. So hard luck."

"My husband, the charmer." She smiled fondly at his resolute back. "We're right behind you, you know. All the way. You don't have to be so hostile."

"Hostile's my middle name, babe." It was just the kind of answer he always had; just the kind of answer she had expected him to have. Making light of everything, and filled with cocksure confidence. There was none of his usual humour in evidence though; the bravura smile was not there, and she could hear its absence even though she couldn't see his face. "It's not smiles and good vibes that are going to win us this war."

"Maybe." She fell silent and let him lead on, apparently oblivious now to the trail of people following him. The rain stung her eyes and made a mess of the basic tribal make up she was wearing. She could taste it as it ran down over her lips. Quite suddenly, more so than ever before, she wanted all of this to be over. Tai-San had always accepted the way of things; gone with the flow and let the universe lead. Now she didn't want to do that. She just wanted the gunfire gone, and the hiding to be over. She wanted everything to be safe again. Maybe soon it would - or maybe soon it would cease to matter. Either way there was a sense that it must all soon be over; it had to be, one way or the other. She could feel it in the air; see it in the gathering of the storm clouds. There was a sense of inevitability in every raindrop. And for the first time, she didn't care for any of it. She just wanted the world to be at peace.

Amber had spent fully a day lying on the bed in her hotel room, variously staring up at the ceiling and burying her face in her hands. Sasha knew better than to disturb her, though he made some soup once, and left it beside the bed. She didn't touch it. She just lay there, listening to the conflicting thoughts as they danced through her head, and trying to decide what to do. The Guardian hadn't given her any time limits; hadn't said that she had to set out on her mission today, or tomorrow, or even next week. Just that she had to go sometime, or lose her baby son forever.

And in the meantime, such a revelation to comprehend. Bray was alive. She had thought him dead for so long; and hoped and lost hope by turn. How could he be alive? She had told herself so often that it was impossible, but the Guardian knew it. He had told her of the night she had come to the hotel, when he had been watching her from the top floor; how he had seen Bray chasing after her, desperate to prevent her from giving herself up to Tribe Fury. How he had left in the end with Ebony, wandering away like a man broken. She had realised then how it must have looked, as she had walked up the steps, all caught up with Sasha; as though Bray had been the last thing in her mind. Maybe he had been; it was easier not to think of him, after all. There was so much else to think about, too. Hunger, fear, confusion, the hopelessness of tomorrow. And through it all, Eden. Her first thought, her last thought, her pretty much every thought. There hadn't been room in her head for Bray lately. And now he was alive, and she didn't have time to wonder at it, and marvel at it, and rejoice at it, because the Guardian had been waving it at her like a flag. Now she was lying here, trying to put off the moment when she was going to have to go out into the streets, following the directions of an armed escort, to find Bray and bring him in. She knew exactly why the Guardian wanted him. He had his same mad ideas about Zoot as ever, and as ever carried around his paranoid fears about the brother of his supposed 'god'. Amber didn't know what to do, and for once Sasha was no help. There was a moral quandary here for him, for to betray anybody to the enemy was a dreadful thing to do, especially when the person in question was sure to die. He didn't love Bray though; they had never got along. Sasha loved Eden, and when the choice was between the baby and his father, it was not a particularly difficult choice for him to make. Amber knew that it wouldn't be for her either, when it came down to it. How could it be? Eden was her son. He was a part of her, and she loved him more than she had ever loved anybody. More than she could ever have imagined loving somebody. Compared to that, whatever she felt for Bray could not compete.

And so at the end of that day, drained of all feeling save the burning inside her at the thought of being parted forever from Eden, she sat slowly up, drained the mug of now cold soup that Sasha had made for her hours before, and searched for the bag she had brought to the hotel. It was Eden's bag, full, whenever she found the opportunity to fill it, with nappies, cream and shampoo. It hadn't been full until she had filled it at the hotel, and she hadn't had much opportunity to use it since then. Mobile supplies were fairly pointless when it wasn't safe to leave your room. She had a use for it now though, and packed it full of food. A bottle of water just about fitted down the side, then she slung the bag around her neck on its long, padded strap, and turned to the door. Sasha, at whom she had not looked since arising from the bed, was standing there waiting for her.

"You don't have to come," she told him. He smiled.

"Yes I do. I'm not letting you go out there alone, Amber. Especially given what you're going to do. Besides, it could take you days to find Bray. The Guardian didn't seem entirely clear on where he is, and even if they're radioing ahead to make sure that the Furies don't take us out, we'll still have to be careful of the rebels, and of the Independents, if there's any of them left. We'll have to be so careful. I'm not leaving you to do all of that alone."

"Thank you." She smiled briefly, though it was a smile without emotion to back it up. "I... I appreciate you more than you know, Sasha. More than I've shown you, I think. You're a good friend to have around."

"I'll always do what I can for you." He was so honest, and so genuine, and so supportive, that for some moments she couldn't remember why she hadn't just left with him, when he had made the offer to her some months before. He had been willing to take her away from the Mall, away from all thought of the city. Away from the dangers of Locos and Demon Dogs, fear of the Virus, and away from the dangers that always seemed to gather and descend upon this mad little outpost of humanity. Instead she had chosen to stay; chosen to leave in the end and then return. Return to it all, to help fight the Chosen, and to produce, most unexpectedly, the little boy who was now being held to secure her co-operation. None of it would have happened, to her at least, if she had gone with Sasha. She knew that she loved him, at least in part. The last few months together, ever since he had found her up in the hills, had proved that to her. Now he was choosing to come with her, when he had no need to do so, and risk his life to help protect her son.

"You're a good man, Sasha. Too good, maybe. You shouldn't be here in this city."

"Maybe I won't for much longer. Maybe Tribe Fury will be defeated soon, and I can go back to my old life."

"Maybe." She didn't want to think about that; didn't want him to leave again. But she couldn't stop to dwell upon it now. "Well... come on if you're coming."

"Of course." He opened the door, stepping back to allow her to go through it first. He took the bag from her in the same moment, shouldering it himself instead, then following her out into the hall. "Listen, Amber..."

"Don't." She smiled at him again, but again her eyes were empty. "Don't tell me that you're sorry, or that it'll all work out in the end, or that it's not as bad as it seems, or any of those other things that people tell each other. It won't make me feel any better. It can't."

"Okay." He nodded, understanding as always. "Let's just go then. Get it done."

"Yeah." She couldn't quite meet his eyes then. She felt like the worst of all traitors for setting out on this mission, and she didn't want him to look at her. He reached out and took her hand though, and led the way down the corridor, down the stairs, and towards the front door. A group of the guards that always seemed to be waiting there fell into step behind them, and as one they stepped out into the outside world. They heard gunfire and shouting; saw the line of tanks that defended the hotel. So much madness. This one more insanity; that of betraying a loved one to save another; seemed less mad out here. Less mad, or just less overtly so. Sasha squeezed her hand very gently.

"It's alright." She had never felt less alright, but she knew that she could do this. Knew that she would do it, unless somebody killed her first. Eden's little face floated through her mind, and she felt her heart beat a little faster, a little harder. She had to do this. Maybe, one day - if he survived - Bray would understand. If he didn't she wasn't sure that she could live with herself, even though she knew that she would; because of Eden. Her reason for betraying. Her reason, perhaps, for killing. And always, always her reason for living. Living a life that was so very different now, and could never be the same again.

Time had taken on an ethereal quality in the last day or two. Pinned down by enemy fire, and unable to move, Racha's group were trapped as surely as flies in the strongest web. Having lost some of their best men to the tank attack that had heralded the new wave of violence, they were down on numbers and on morale. A few had been wounded since then, though they had been lucky that it had been only a few. In the constant barrage of gunfire it had grown impossible to think, and they all spent their time sitting or lying around, wishing for better shelter when the rain fell, and trying to find some way to fight back. It was impossible. They were completely surrounded, and only the strength of their position had prevented them from being overrun. With their huge store of ammunition they could keep the enemy at bay, but couldn't quell the rising tide of the siege army that stood against them. Archer swore that they could hold their position indefinitely, as long as the enemy didn't use the tanks again, but nobody else shared his confidence. Racha, usually the epitome of self-belief, had apparently been reduced to outbursts of directionless fury, and no longer appeared to be of use to anybody. If they had had any alcohol, he gave the distinct impression that he would have been soaking in it by then, and he seemed to take no particular interest in anything. Ebony amused herself by winding him up, unleashing his ferocious temper for no reason other than that it was better than the drab, lifeless silences that otherwise gripped them all. Life under constant fire had a grim inevitability about it; a sense that everything could be over at any time. It was impossible to sleep, for some amongst them had to be firing back all the time, and they all had to remain on their guard for snipers and grenade attacks. They had a few food stores, but nobody wanted to eat. Every so often somebody would try to start up a conversation, but it would peter out before it ever really had a chance to begin. Only Ryan seemed ready to match Archer's optimism, although even he failed to believe that they really had any chance. As long as they had ammunition they were in no immediate danger of being taken, but many amongst them had ceased to care. Why bother waiting that long, they argued. Why not just surrender and have done with it? Archer convinced them that their lives would be worth nothing if they did so, but many amongst them still seemed to entertain the idea. It had been only forty-eight hours; perhaps a little more. Clearly something had to happen, or before another day or two had passed, the assembled, disheartened rebels would be throwing down their guns and trying their luck with their former colleagues. Bray tried telling them that their lives would certainly be forfeit as traitors, especially now that something seemed to have happened to Silver - something bad enough to have changed the whole face of the war, and left Racha worried out of his mind for the health of his former friend - but none of the rebels were ready to listen to Bray. He would never be one of them, to his eyes or to theirs.

"How are you doing?" Settling down next to Salene now that his shift was over, Ryan laid aside his rifle and offered his girlfriend a tired smile. She returned it, the strain showing in her eyes.

"I'm okay."

"Sure?"

"No. But I'm better than I could be." She squeezed his hand. "And we're still alive."

"Which is always good." He settled close to her. "I'm sorry. I seem to remember it being my idea that we come back to the city. That probably wasn't a great thing to do, was it."

"Things were less dangerous in the countryside, certainly." She managed a smile, surprising herself with its authenticity. Once upon a time a situation like this would have terrified her into virtual catatonia, but she felt better than she would have expected now. Maybe it was the fact that Ryan was with her, or maybe it was the result of everything else that they had been through giving her a maturity that could help her to cope. It probably didn't matter. She was no fighter, but she felt better knowing that she was unlikely to break down under this new kind of pressure. She just wished that she knew for sure that she would survive.

"Hey Bray." Coming off duty at the same time as Ryan, Ebony threw herself down beside her old friend. He offered her a distracted half smile. "Everything okay?"

"Okay?" This time he managed to make the smile a full one. "Not the word I'd have chosen."

"Really? But everything's going so well. Nothing like a good siege for a bit of entertainment."

"Yeah. Sure." He stared listlessly up at the permanently grey sky. "Great weather, constant gunfire. Everything's perfect."

"That's the spirit." She tossed him her rifle. "You should take a few shots with this. Great therapy."

"I'd rather read a good book." He laid the gun aside. "Not that they're in plentiful supply right now."

"There must be a library near here somewhere, or a bookshop. Didn't there used to be that old college bookstore next to the internet café over there?"

"Internet café?" His eyes drifted over to look at the building, far away across what had once been a smart pedestrian area. "Isn't that the one--"

"That we snuck off to when we were on that geography field trip, yeah." She grinned. "The whole school got dragged out on that trip, remember? Traipsing around town looking at... I don't know. Sewers or something. Zoot was shocked that we'd run off."

"Martin." He said it quietly, and without force. "He wasn't Zoot then."

"You're telling me. But things changed pretty quickly after that."

"Yeah." His eyes were still focused upon distant things, but she could see that it was no longer the surrounding landmarks that attracted his attention. "It was our last school trip. There was supposed to be another one afterwards, for the school cricket team, but I didn't go because my mother was just starting to feel ill, and the cricket coach got sick too. I never saw him again."

"Marley. Jimmy Marley, wasn't it? He was about eighty, but he had a great bowling arm. Poor guy." She leaned closer, trying to hold off actually putting an arm around Bray's shoulders. "We're going to get out of this, you know. We always do, and this is no different."

"Sure."

"We'll get to the hotel, and we'll get Amber and the baby out, and everything will turn out fine."

"Yeah." He conjured up a smile from somewhere. "Just as soon as the twenty of us that are left manage to blast our way through the assembled might of Tribe Fury. That tank attack split us up too much, Ebony. We got scattered all over the place. Who knows how many others even survived? Whoever did isn't going to come running to our rescue. If they've got any sense they're in hiding somewhere, or they tried to melt back in with the opposition. Either way, we're not in the world's greatest situation just now."

"You noticed that?" She smiled faintly. "We've been pinned down by enemy fire for nearly two days, we've got no food, and none of us can move more than fifty yards in any direction. I've been in better situations. I can't remember any that got so bad so quickly, either."

"It's not like you to sound despondent." He finally focused his eyes properly in the present, eyeing her with something approaching concern. It was hard to have a gentle, private moment in the midst of the constant gunfire, when there were so many of them living in such close quarters. "Are you okay?"

"Of course I'm okay. I'm always okay. And I'm not despondent." She smiled at him, rather enjoying the moment even if it was caught in the middle of such dire circumstances. "We could die at any moment, and it's not likely that we'll get out of here without a miracle. But I'm not despondent."

"Well I'm glad one of us isn't." He rubbed his eyes, wishing for a let up in the gunfire so that he could go for a long walk, and get away from all of the others. It was easier to breathe when there were fewer people around. "I don't think I've felt really cheerful in... well, in a long time."

"Yeah. Noticed that." This time she did let her arm slide around his shoulders, and unexpectedly he didn't object. He didn't relax into the embrace, either, but he didn't seem to be entirely uncomfortable with it. "Nobody's at their happiest when their city is being occupied by the enemy. Some of us manage to find a reason to smile through it though."

"Some people are just more easily pleased." He frowned for a second, looking up rather sharply. "Did the gunfire just slacken off for a moment?"

"Probably just your imagination. Either that or everybody stopped to reload at the same moment." Her playful smile renewed itself before his eyes. "You're extra jumpy."

"There's a lot to be extra jumpy about." He managed to dredge up another smile in reply. "I just thought I heard a moment of silence, that's all. Or nearly silence."

"You're wishing for quiet. Who wouldn't? This constant noise would get to anybody, especially somebody who likes to be all silent and soulful and solitary."

"I suppose." This time his smile felt a little more genuine. "Not going to go quiet though, is it."

"Not until they're dead or we are, no." She shrugged. "And it's not likely to be them. We've got a hell of a lot of ammunition thanks to Archer being the real boy scout, but they must have us outnumbered five to one. Besides which, they can get more equipment whenever they want it, and we're stuck with what we've already got."

"Thanks for the pep talk." He rose to his feet, looking out across the space that separated them from the enemy, trusting the basic shelter and constant barrage of gunfire from their side, to protect him from being shot. "Really, what would I do without you?"

"You'd probably be dead, so it's an irrelevant question." She stood beside him, wishing that they had just that little bit more in common, so that their closeness might be closer, and her flirtation might stand a greater chance of reciprocation. For a moment, as she stared out across the square, she thought that she saw something moving. She dismissed the thought. The enemy weren't going to try to rush them. It would be insane given the strength of their position. None of them had tried to advance by so much as a step since the siege had begun. All the same, her eyes remained fixed upon the place where she thought she had seen the figures moving. After a second she realised that Bray was staring that way too.

"You see something?" she asked him, wanting confirmation. He nodded very slowly, eyes lingering on bullet-scarred walls.

"Thought so. People?"

"That or the stray dogs have started walking on two legs." She picked up her gun. "I could take some shots in their direction. See what we winkle out."

"You can't shoot at possibly innocent people." He pushed her gun down, and she scowled.

"Remember you thought there was a let up in the gunfire? Well suppose you were right, and our friends out there were letting somebody through? Somebody they didn't want to take the risk of shooting?"

"I thought we'd agreed that was my imagination." He shook his head. "Anyway, you can't just go opening fire. We don't know who they are."

"My guess? The enemy." She sighed. "I'm glad I'm not the good guy. It's way too much hard work."

"You're not so bad." He smiled at her, and although his eyes were distant, she thought that she saw real fondness in them somewhere. She smiled as well. It was a smile that turned to a frown though, for she had suddenly caught another glimpse of the two flitting figures, and it had been glimpse enough for identification. Or so she thought. One female, one male. One blonde, one red-headed. She had seen them last when they had been going into the hotel after giving themselves up to Tribe Fury, but even had she not seen either one in much longer, she would still have known who they were. She would never forget Amber's face. Not with everything that it meant.

"Bray..." she began, uncertain. He frowned down at her. Clearly he had not seen the figures that second time.

"What?"

"Just... I--" Briefly she thought about raising the gun again. So easy. So easy just to lift it and fire. She wouldn't be able to hit them, much less kill them, now that they were no longer in sight; but she might be able to discourage them from coming any closer. Maybe then they would go their separate way, and not come here. Not just yet, anyway; not when Bray had just smiled at her with real warmth in his eyes. They were breaking cover now though, rushing towards them in plain view of everybody, and she knew that she couldn't raise her gun to fire then. Bray was shouting; she heard his voice so loudly, so clearly, even though the rattle of the guns was always so loud. He was yelling for their side to cease fire; he was running, breaking cover himself, and the shots from the enemy camp bounced off the tarmac at his feet. Ebony leapt forward as well, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him back, but he was still standing out there, still yelling, until finally they were getting the message, and the gunfire was easing up a little, on their side at least. And the two people were running closer and closer, and tumbling over the sheltering wall of trashcans and cardboard boxes and empty barrels, and Bray was following them - like a mechanical man, for all the life that there was in his face and his eyes. Ebony wanted to hold him, but she knew that if she did that now, he would only push her away. Not like just a few minutes before. The game was different now.

"Amber?" Bray sounded so tentative that it was almost as though he had forgotten how to speak. He didn't run to her, didn't hug her; didn't do anything but stand very still, the animation still missing from his face. Ebony saw the blonde girl turn, her face so familiar beneath the street dirt, her tightly tied hair showing dark roots and blonde highlights and the suggestion of recent bleach. Recent bleach. Somebody hadn't been slumming it in lousy shelters for the last who knew how many days and weeks. The violent rainstorm that had scoured the city with such force just a few hours previously had left a few marks on the pair's clothes, and made Sasha's usually bouncy hair look a little subdued, but other than that they both looked far better than the rebels they had so suddenly joined.

"Amber!" It was Salene, being so much more spirited than Bray in her words of welcome. "Amber, it's wonderful to see you!"

"Salene!" Giving the girl a quick hug, and sharing the same with Ryan, Amber smiled around at everybody. "I-- I'm so glad I found you. It's crazy out there. I thought we'd never make it."

"But you did." Ebony couldn't resist it. "You made it through all those guys with guns. And none of them shot you. Almost as if they were aiming somewhere else."

"It didn't feel like it to me." Amber looked past her old rival, her eyes alighting upon Bray. There was something odd about those eyes, decided Ebony, but she couldn't quite decide what. "Bray?"

"Amber." It was a curiously lifeless echo of his first voicing of her name. She ran to him then, hugging him stiffly, and without response. Only when she was about to step back did he return the gesture, and then only for a brief moment. He held her at arms length after that, and frowned as though unable to comprehend the situation. "Where's the baby?"

"You know about him." She smiled. "He's safe, Bray. Safe in a little stronghold we have near here. There are a whole lot of us there, and it's safe. Safe, warm, and with plenty of food." She beamed at him. "We were out looking for survivors. I never dreamed--"

"You went to the hotel." He spoke very slowly. It was all too much, too soon. Amber, Sasha, talk of sanctuary. What the hell was going on? Footsteps sounded heavily on the wet ground behind him, and he looked back to see Archer approaching. He was holding his gun, his mirrored shades reflecting Bray's own drawn face, as well as Amber's oddly detached one. Bray muttered under his breath, then turned his back on the approaching soldier, and stared deeply into Amber's eyes. "I saw you. You escaped?"

"You don't think we'd have gone into the hotel if we didn't have an escape plan?" She was smiling at him, her familiar, warm, wonderful smile that he had fallen for almost as soon as he had first laid eyes upon her, way back in long ago days at the Mall. "Of course we escaped. We were so tired, and so hungry, and I needed food because of the baby. He needed to be warm and dry for a while. But yes, of course we escaped. Us and a bunch of others, and we got this sanctuary together. It's underground, but there's loads of space, and we have enough food for all of you, if you all want to come. I don't know how you'd all get past the Furies out there, but there's a weak point in their perimeter, and--"

"And this babbling isn't convincing anybody." Ebony folded her arms. "You want to try the truth for a while, Amber?"

"Shut up, Ebony." Bray was looking confused. Confused and lost. "Tribe Fury stopped shooting for a second. Almost as if somebody was coming through their lines. Somebody they didn't want to shoot." He shook his head. "That wasn't you?"

"Us? Why would it have been us?" She didn't look amazed at the suggestion though, thought Ebony. Not amazed at all. Just... desperate to deny it. Sasha was keeping very quiet, and he wasn't looking at anybody. Something here smelt as bad as the streets, when the sun was at its hottest and the rubbish was festering in all the corners. But Bray had that look in his eyes; the look that said that this was Amber, and that she had come back to him, and that they had a baby son waiting somewhere, yet to have his first glimpse of his father. Ryan and Salene weren't helping, with their soppy expressions, and their big, trusting eyes. She shook her head, disgusted with them all.

And then Archer was there, standing behind Bray, a recently appointed lieutenant on either side of him. Trax and Lindt; one tall, one broad; one bearded, one bald. She hoped they had been chosen for their military abilities, rather than just for their visual impact. They were beginning to fan out, guns at the ready, but Bray, predictably enough, was trying to get between them and Amber. The idiot was going to get himself shot, and Ebony would be damned if she was going to let that happen now. Not after everything they had lived through recently. She stepped forward.

"Problems, Archer?"

"We don't know them." Archer had come to respect Ebony, even if he did still have an impressively low opinion of Bray. "And they were in the hotel."

"Yeah, but so were you, once." She flashed him a happy little smile. "It's okay. Put the guns away. I can vouch for these people."

"Thank you, Ebony." Amber looked rather disconcerted, and Ebony did her best to make that worse by glaring sharply at the other girl. If she was hoping for a flash of guilt, or a crumbling of some uncertain façade, however, she was disappointed. Amber merely moved a little closer to Bray.

"You will come, won't you?" she asked, switching the subject as though Archer and his two heavies had never even approached. Archer was still there though, and he still held a gun pointed roughly at Sasha. For his part Sasha was still quiet. He still hadn't spoken; still hadn't done much at all, save answer the welcoming smiles of Ryan and Salene. Now he was looking at the ground, somewhere in the region of Amber's feet, and playing unconsciously with a home-made musical instrument hanging on his belt.

"This is kind of sudden, Amber." Bray's words nearly caused Ebony to breathe a huge sigh of relief. So he did still have his brain turned on. Sudden? That didn't begin to cover it. The last they had seen of Amber she had been walking into the hotel; now, after all the time Bray had spent punching walls and raging at anything that stood still long enough, fuming at his inability to save her, suddenly here she was. Claiming to have escaped from the hotel - with a baby in her arms?! Ebony didn't believe that for a moment. People didn't just appear in the middle of a siege. They didn't just climb out of the woodwork bringing the promise of food, warmth and shelter to unknown combatants. Not in a city like this, when you could never know who to trust. The only reason anybody would risk doing that was if they already knew who was in the centre of the siege. And there was no way that Amber could have known that without hearing it from someone. Salene was moving forward though, all smiles, all trust, all delight. Ebony could cheerfully have shot her.

"It sounds wonderful," she gushed, her eyes practically tearing up at the suggestion. Salene, Ebony mused unhappily, would never be a commando. "To be warm, and dry. To have something to eat. Bray, don't you think it would be wonderful?"

"Maybe." Bray, who hadn't really had cause to be warm or comfortable since Ebony had thrown him out of the city before all of this even started, didn't sound moved by the suggestion. There was something else in his eyes though, and Ebony didn't need to wonder at what it was. "Eden. KC said the baby was called Eden."

"KC's here too?" Amber was looking around, surprised, but snapped her eyes back to Bray soon enough. "Yes. He's beautiful, Bray. So beautiful. I've done the best I could for him, and I'm sorry about naming him without you, but I wasn't even sure that you were alive. You should come and see him. A son should see his father. He looks like you."

"Nobody's leaving." Archer spoke with the voice of cold authority, and Ebony could almost have kissed him. She tried to move closer to Bray; tried to get into a position from which she might be able to surreptitiously share her concerns, but Amber was in the way, and Trax, and increasingly Salene as well. A conspiracy of bodies, thwarting her attempts. Mutiny flashed in Bray's eyes; mutiny and worry. Confusion. Everything was going too fast for him too, Ebony could see; but whether or not he would act on that, or just blindly accept what Amber was saying, she couldn't yet guess. One could never tell, with Bray.

"There's no danger." Amber sounded almost desperate; speaking so quickly that it barely seemed like a natural reaction. "The shelter's great, there's food for everybody who wants it. You should see your son, Bray."

"Every father should see his son." The voice took them all by surprise; they all turned to look at Racha as he came towards them. He was unshaven, his formerly neat clothing now battered by the weather, and the days of hiding in filthy shelters. His warm black eyes seemed faintly unfocused; unnaturally bright, and filled with sights of his own making. Racha was not the man he had been recently. He was lost in his own world now, thinking almost exclusively of Silver, and worrying about the friend he had chosen to fight. He put a hand on Bray's shoulder, eyeing Amber almost as a rival, but with a genuine interest. "You were inside the hotel?"

"Yes." She didn't know what to make of Racha - few did. With his mane of blond hair, his deep black eyes, and his habit of appearing to be flirting with everything he looked at, he did take some getting used to, Ebony supposed. The handsome head nodded up and down.

"And you saw Silver?"

"Yes." She thought back to the leader of Tribe Fury; all furious enthusiasm and excitement for his war.

"And you know why his tactics have changed? Why the war is being fought differently now? You know what's going on back at the hotel?"

"Yes..." Amber wasn't sure quite how to answer that one. She couldn't speak of the Guardian, and instinct told her that it wouldn't be healthy to mention that Silver seemed to have vanished. "It would be easier if you came to the shelter though. There are others there who knew Silver better than I did. I only spoke to him once."

"Brigadier..." began Archer, apparently feeling the same unease as Ebony. Again she felt that she could almost have kissed him. Racha merely shook his head.

"No. You don't have to come. You can stay here, get shot. Do what you like. But I have to find out what happened to Silver, and I'm going to find out."

"By following a complete stranger to a shelter that might not even exist?" Ebony couldn't stop the words from jumping out of her mouth, and almost winced at the angry look Bray flashed her way. She could see what he was thinking - that she was ranging herself against Amber again; trying to stir things up; causing trouble. Maybe, she thought, she couldn't blame him for thinking that way. The precedents were legion, after all. But couldn't he see that there were enough rats here to colonise several countries? Something was wrong. Something involving a certain blonde girl and her red-headed friend, and their unlikely appearance here and now. None of it made any sense; save that it was a trap. And given that this was Amber, that made very little sense either. Why would Amber come here to spring a trap, much less a trap for Bray? But then there was little that really did make sense these days. Archer was still trying to make Racha listen to him, she thought; still trying to tell him that it was insane to blindly follow this unknown pair off towards the massed ranks of the enemy. Racha, predictably enough, wasn't listening. When did Racha ever listen to anybody else - even before he had lost his head? The question that remained now was whether Archer, lent strength by his days in command since Racha's unexpected change of priorities, would stand up to his superior officer and put a stop to all of this before it went too far. He already seemed to be backing down though, moving back physically as well as metaphorically, his mirrored lenses pointing at the ground. He wasn't going to be standing up to Racha - not today, or any other time soon. Just as Racha had been unable, in the end, to lose his loyalty to Silver, so too was Archer unable to rise up against Racha. Ebony shook her head.

"You really think we can get past all those soldiers out there?" asked Salene. Ebony could almost have shouted at her - Of course we can't get past all those soldiers! There are dozens of them, with automatic weaponry, all pointed in our direction, and you think we can somehow get twenty people out of here without them noticing?! She didn't say it though; there was no point. If there was one thing she had learnt over the years, it was that people would invariably make their own mistakes, regardless of attempts to help them. And Racha most certainly was going to follow Amber now; follow her to wherever it was that she was planning to lead them; just because he wanted to find out what had happened to Silver. Ebony could have told him the answer to that easily enough - somebody in his close little circle had got rid of him, and had fancied his position in command. Either that or he had finally gone as crazy as his former best friend. But when was there ever any point in saying such things to Racha?

"I can get us past the soldiers," Amber was promising. "We have some inside men. They'll help us. Like I said, there's a weak point in their defences. If we head for that, I can get everybody through. You'll have to move fast though. If you're coming, come. If not..." Her voice trailed away, and she reached out one hand towards Bray. He took it almost without thinking, although his eyes were still troubled. There was something that he didn't quite understand; wasn't quite happy about. Ebony wished that he would act upon it; wished it fervently. Of course he didn't; he didn't even ask any more questions. He merely nodded, slowly, his head moving like a dead weight.

"Then decide who's coming." The cool eyes surveyed the whole group. Ebony didn't trust those eyes. Were they looking at potential new recruits for this unlikely little stronghold she had been talking about, or was she sizing them up for more sinister reasons. Insane, she told herself. This is Amber. But Amber had been inside the hotel, and being with the enemy could change a person. She had seen Zoot brainwash more than one 'volunteer'. She was pretty sure that a military organisation like Tribe Fury would be capable of that too.

"We're all going." Racha looked more like the man in command again, his bearing stiff and erect, the sparkle returned to his dark black eyes. "Isn't that right, Colonel Archer?"

Now's your chance, Archer. Ebony watched him with earnest, bright eyes. Now's your chance to put your foot down; tell him this is crazy; get everybody to see that this whole damn story reeks of lies and danger. Instead, predictably enough, Archer merely gave a brisk nod and clamped his hands behind his back.

"Yes sir." He spoke like the good, well trained soldier he had always showed himself to be - but with none of the efficiency and independence of thought that he had been displaying these last few days. "We're all going."

"Good man." Racha looked towards Ebony then, apparently willing to consider her as separate to his band of Furies. "And what about you? You clearly don't believe this story. You'll be staying here?"

Here, where getting shot seemed her most likely fate - although even that was probably still better than being brainwashed by the enemy. She could stay here, and possibly escape, and let all these idiots walk off into what might well be a trap - or she could go with them, and get caught up in the trap herself. Be free, and safe - more or less - whilst Bray walked headlong into danger without her being there to help him. She couldn't even believe that she was considering it. Ebony always put herself first. Her own needs, her own wants, her own safety. All her instincts told her to stay here. Not to go with them. Stay here, stay safe, stay free. And, by association, be powerless to do anything about it if this really was a trap. She shook her head, very, very faintly.

"No." When she said it she could scarcely believe that it was her voice; that it was her decision; that she really was agreeing to this. "No, I'm not staying. I'm coming." She knew it was madness, and she couldn't really explain it, save that her best chance of helping was to go along with the rest of them. At least then somebody would have their eyes open. At least then one of them might be able to sound the alarm in time. Racha nodded briskly.

"Right. Good." His hand fell at last from Bray's shoulder. "Then lead on, Amber. We're right behind you."

"I'm... glad." Except that you don't look glad, Amber, thought Ebony, unable to keep the suspicion from her eyes. You don't look glad, you look... But she couldn't decide just what that look was, and had to leave it at that. Amber was smiling though, even if it didn't look at all real, and she was starting to lead the way over the barricades. Bray was following her, face closed, eyes troubled. Sasha didn't look any happier. Ebony couldn't stop shaking her head, very slowly, very slightly, from side to side. Was she really the only person who could see this? Were the others really that blinded by delight, and hope, and the promise of a meal? This was a trap. It had to be.

Then why are you going with them? asked a voice inside her. If it's a trap, why are you going along? Good question; but she knew the answer already. Because Bray is going. Whatever suspicions he has - and I can see he has some, because they're showing in his eyes - he's still going. And I can't let him go alone. It seemed the stupidest of reasons, but it was her reason, and she was sticking with it. And stick with it she did, as she stepped out from behind the barricades, and followed her friends and colleagues into the street. For all her instincts and forewarned state of alert, she didn't notice that they were being surrounded. Not until it was already far too late.

Chapter Text

Jack had only been into the attic of the Mall a handful of times before. He and Dal had run some electrical cables up there once, long ago, when they had been working on their plan to put security cameras all over the building. Before that he had come up once or twice with Adam, the boy with whom he had first found the Mall. They had explored the whole place together then, probing and poking into every corner, gathering together everything that they could find, checking to be sure that they were alone. The attic reminded Jack of both of his friends for just that reason; reminded him of times spent crawling around in the cramped, dark space with two people he had once known, in separate times; two people who had been his close friends, and were now dead. It wasn't as if he could see them there; Adam, tall and proud, his luridly red hair a startling contrast to the utter blackness of his skin; Dal, small and dark and permanently cheerful, always teasing Jack for his seriousness. It wasn't as if he could hear their voices in the silence, or even feel their presence. Adam was long gone; gone for several months before Jack had ever met Dal. Dal hardly seemed to have gone at all, probably since he had already been long dead and buried before Jack had found out about it all. But whatever the reasons, whatever the circumstances, the attic made Jack think of them both. Made him think of the good-natured arguments as he and Dal had scrambled about up here, banging their heads on the roof, skinning their knees on the rafters, slipping about and stumbling blindly into cobwebs of impressive proportions. Made him think of Adam, who had hidden behind a support pillar, and tried to pretend to be a ghost in the hope of making Jack jump. He smiled at the thought now, as he struggled on through the dark space, without even a flashlight to make the going easier. They had a torch, he and Luke, but aside from wanting to save the batteries, they didn't often dare use the thing. There was never any telling who might see the light, somehow, somewhere. Neither of them was prepared to risk that.

"You get anything?" Luke's voice was unnaturally quiet. Never exactly the loudest of people, Luke had been reduced to a whisper and a shadow since the realisation that the Chosen were back. When they had taken over the Mall, and Jack and Luke had taken refuge in the attic, Luke had been a trembling wreck. He had got a hold of himself since then, but he still never spoke any more loudly than he had to; never quite lost the haunted look in his eyes. Jack could sympathise. He hated the Chosen more than he would ever once have believed it possible to hate anybody. Certainly more than he had hated the Locos, with their craziness and their random violence. More than he hated Tribe Fury, with their guns and their bombs and their fierce ruthlessness. The Chosen had caused Dal's death. The Chosen had sent him out of the city, to a forced labour camp. The Chosen had caused him to be somewhere other than at Dal's side, at the end. He could never forgive them for any of that. Luke couldn't forgive them either, for everything that he had helped them to do, when he had still been the Guardian's faithful lieutenant. That much was written in his eyes as he huddled in his corner, trying to keep warm in the draughty space they had made their home, and staring over at Jack crawling through the hatch. Jack struggled over to join him.

"Not a lot. I managed to grab another bottle of water, but it's going to start looking too obvious if we take anymore just yet." He handed the bottle over, but despite being thirsty, Luke didn't want to take a drink. He could feel from the bottle that the water inside would be cold, and he was more than cold enough already without adding to the problem. Setting the bottle down, he blew on his hands and tried not to shiver.

"How's it looking down there?" he asked, in the tone of voice of one who wasn't entirely sure that he wanted his question answered. Jack shrugged.

"Trudy is holding the kids together well, but she shouldn't be having to do it alone. I think there's more of the Chosen down there now. They're out in the streets as well, and I saw a bunch of other kids out there too. They don't dare try anything with all the little kids as hostages. My guess is they'll surrender."

"Yeah..." Luke sounded distant and unhappy. "Happening all over again, isn't it."

"Maybe." Jack shrugged. "Weren't working with Tribe Fury last time though, were they."

"You think they are this time?" For the first time all day, Luke's eyes showed a spark of real interest. Jack shrugged.

"Looks like it. I think I saw a couple of them downstairs." He shrugged. "Anyway, what's it matter. Chosen, Furies - either way there's not much that we can do about it."

"Yeah." Luke glanced up suddenly, frowning at Jack. "Hold on. I can't see you, Jack, but I can hear you just fine. What have you got up your sleeve?"

"Not nearly as much as I'd like." There was a clattering sound as the smaller boy drew closer, clambering over the rafters to sit alongside his companion. "But look. There isn't a whole lot we can do. Not right now. But what if the others try to get in here? What if Lex, or whoever, decides to take back the Mall? It might happen. Lex is just about crazy enough to try it. If that happens, they'll have a much greater chance of success if they've got some help inside, right?"

"Probably." Now that they were close together they could see each other's faces at last, albeit just a little. Jack could see blue hair and a pale smudge of a face, and Luke could see red hair, and the beginnings of a cunning smile. "What sort of help?"

"This and that." Jack was taking things out of his shirt; things that he had secreted down inside it during his foray to the lower floors. Things that he had taken when he had been supposed to be searching for food. Luke rolled his eyes at the sight of it. For somebody who seemed to be permanently hungry, Jack had a remarkable ability to forget about such minor necessities as eating. They pored over the loot together; a screwdriver or three, several small reels of wiring, a handful of batteries, some scrap pieces of metal, some string, assorted screws, and some insulating tape. Not exactly treasure, but Luke had no doubt that Jack's sharp mind would find something to do with it all. He raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Do you have some kind of plan?" he asked. Jack shook his head. Plans were for practical minds. Jack thought up inventions, and new things to do with computers. If he wanted to he could undoubtedly design some basic weapons, built from odds and ends, that might help anybody trying to take the Mall back from its unwelcome Occupiers - but any planning that had to be done couldn't be his responsibility as well. Luke could appreciate that, and he knew that that would be his task. He sighed. Jack squinted at him out of the corner of one eye as he collected up some errant screws.

"What?" he asked. Luke shook his head.

"Nothing." It would do him good, he supposed, having to stir himself to proper thought. Ever since the Chosen had appeared in the Mall he had thought about little other than his hatred of them, and the hatred of himself that he felt whenever he remembered how he had once been one of them. Now he had to think of something more positive. Some way of using whatever tricks Jack designed, in order to fight back against the enemies downstairs. He could already feel his brain prickling, even though real ideas were far away as yet. He smiled.

"It could be months, Jack."

"It could be days. It could be hours."

"Unlikely."

"I know." The cheerfully optimistic boy shrugged his cocky shoulders, enjoying a display of self-confidence. "But I'll be ready. I can make stuff. Steal some more things from downstairs, use some of the junk up here. I can make us things that'll help. I know I can."

"Yeah. I think you could probably make anything you set your mind to, Jack. Whether or not it'll make any difference - that I don't know." Luke couldn't help thinking what unlikely soldiers they were. Jack was no fighter. He simply wasn't the type, and any 'weapons' he might happen to design were unlikely to be especially devastating. All the same, there was a chance that they could accomplish something, and that chance was what made Jack's eyes bright with his new enthusiasm. Luke could feel it beginning to rub off. He smiled. Jack saw the flicker of new hope, and grinned anew.

"Of course, I'm going to need chocolate," he said hopefully. Luke just laughed.

"Chocolate? We're trapped in the attic, Jack. If you wanted chocolate, you should have got it when you were downstairs. Screws and wiring might help us fight the Chosen, but they don't taste all that good."

"True." For a second it looked as though Jack might head straight off downstairs, on the hunt for something more edible, but in the end he merely shrugged, and settled down on the floor amongst his beloved junk. Luke was still wondering if it was even possible to make something, when Jack reached for a screwdriver and settled down to work. He wasn't sure what he was making yet, but his head was full of theories. Here was where Dal came in of course; with his comments and his assistance and his ability to keep the feet of his more impulsive friend secure on terra firma. Here was where they would mock fight over the new creation, and joke together in Jack's little workshop, oblivious to the hardships of their lives. For a moment he felt a pang of regret; the deep sadness that could only come from the loss of a friend who could never return, but he shook the feeling away. It wasn't as though he hadn't felt it before. Dal was here with him, somewhere, just like Adam. Here in their place, the home they had won from the madness outside. And Jack's fingers moved with more surety upon their task, and his mind clicked more sharply through its gears. The Chosen were leaving the Mall, whether or not Lex, or anybody else, came to drive them away. Jack was going to see to that. This was his place, damn it. His. And whatever it took, he was going to make it his again.

In later years, looking back, Ebony would never remember seeing surprise on Bray's face when the enemy came for them. The others could probably see it upon her own face, for even though she had fully expected to be attacked, she had never expected them to come so quickly, and so silently. One moment nothing, save the rattle of the guns - the next even that was gone. It was then that she had realised they were surrounded, and that any attempt to use their own guns would be suicide. It was enough to make her want to hit out in her fury, though she knew that would be as senseless as using her gun. She could do nothing save watch as the hidden Furies came towards them, encircling them, greeting Amber with cheerful congratulation. That was when Ebony first noticed that there was no surprise in Bray's eyes, and she realised that his suspicions had been as great as her own. Why the hell had he come, then, if he had known that something was wrong? She didn't really need to ask. He had had to know, simply enough; he had had to find out if his suspicions were correct. Presumably if they were proved right, he didn't care about the consequences enough to worry about the risk he had been taking. That much she could understand. She watched him now, even as she was struggling in the grip of the soldiers who were coming to tie her hands. She saw him, eyes fixed intently upon Amber as more of the soldiers took hold of him. There was such a strange expression in those eyes; such a torn, hurt expression, that begged explanation. Amber didn't answer it, even just with a look of her own. She merely turned away, staring sightlessly at the rain-wet ground, and vanished into the throngs of assembled Furies. Bray didn't even struggle when he was pulled away after that. Ebony didn't think she had ever seen anything more broken.

"Why?" It was her who asked the question in the end. Clearly he wasn't going to. She asked it to Amber's back, turned upon them, and moving away fast. The back didn't slow in its retreat; the familiar face didn't turn around to offer any explanation for the treachery. There was no response at all. Ebony considered repeating the question, but didn't. She had no desire to sound desperate; no desire to sound as though she were begging for something. Somebody pushed her, and she started walking, onwards after that resolutely turned back.

They were all walking then. Her, Bray, Racha, Archer - all of them. Ryan and Salene were together at the back, their own shock as clear as her own. Archer was fuming; he had lost his mirrored shades at some point in a brief struggle, and she could see his eyes for the first time. It might almost have been a shame that she didn't have the time to look at them properly, but he was off to her side and she couldn't really see him at all. Racha was a mystery, as always. Either he still thought that he was on his way to meet somebody who could tell him about Silver, or he hadn't noticed that his hands were tied behind his back, for his attitude didn't seem to have changed. She looked at him sideways, and saw that his eyes still glowed, and his face bore no signs of stress or fury. Not that it was always easy to tell when Racha was angry. He still smiled even then, and anybody who had stirred his wrath didn't know about it until they were lying in broken pieces at his feet. This time, though, she didn't think that there was any storm waiting to break. The storm clouds were perhaps no longer even capable of gathering.

And Bray. Heaven only knew what was going through his mind. His eyes were empty, his expression unreadable. Every so often she caught a glimpse of something; some unimaginable sorrow, or a flicker of disbelief; but it never lasted long. His gaze rested upon that distant back; Amber's stiff shoulders and blonde head. Maybe he was trying to search her soul, and find her reason for betraying him, but if so there was no answer forthcoming, for no understanding ever cleared his face of its periodic distress. Ebony tried to draw closer to him, but they were kept in a formation of sorts, and she couldn't get to him. She was probably the last person he wanted now anyway; Amber's constant rival and critic, like a representation of old insults finally vindicated. Certainly he didn't look at her, or show any awareness of her presence - but then he didn't show any awareness of anything else, either. His feet propelled him onwards only through sheer instinct, or perhaps because the motion of the guards was carrying him along.

"Bray?" She tried speaking to him without expecting an answer. One of the guards thumped her in the back, although the blow was not hard. A warning then; they weren't supposed to speak. Not that it mattered. Bray hadn't shown a flicker of reaction to her voice, and his eyes had not changed their focus. She wondered if he had even heard. A moment later she tried again, more quietly this time, a little more urgently. Still he didn't answer, but she thought that his shoulders slumped a little. She left him alone after that; better to let him mope, if that was what he wanted to do. Better to leave him alone with his thoughts. She couldn't imagine how he felt, having just been betrayed by the supposed love of his life. There were few enough people in Ebony's life that she had become close enough to risk being hurt that much by, and none of them had ever betrayed her. Certainly Bray never had, and he was the one person left who could ever really hurt her. She wanted to make him feel better now, but knew that she couldn't. What was the point in trying?

It was a long walk. She hadn't realised how far away from the hotel they had gone during their various wanderings and manoeuvres. All that way, hands tied, past windows where she knew eyes lay waiting. All those kids; all those tribes; all those potential allies in the fight against the city's oppressors. All seeing her and her cohorts being taken in as prisoners. It made her cheeks burn with anger and humiliation, which at least gave her something to think about other than Bray. Maybe somebody would see what was going on, and come to the rescue; all those kids who at one point or another had had their battles fought and won for them by the Mall Rats; all those kids who owed so much to Bray and his various companions. It was a pipe dream, she knew; none of them were going to come to their aid now. They were all cowering inside, afraid. Either that or they had already bitten the bullet and thrown in their lot with Silver's men, out of one kind of fear or another. They certainly weren't going to take the risk of standing against him now. She could have yelled her rage aloud at the many buildings; told their occupants exactly what she thought of them. Reminded them of the Chosen, and the Virus, and of everything that the Mall Rats had done to make the city safe again after both of those threats. She kept quiet though. Stirring speeches were not for those moments when sullen heavies with automatic rifles were surrounding her on all sides. Ideally, stirring speeches weren't for wasting on cowards, either. She preferred to keep them for her Locos, even if they were probably all now dead.

"What was that?" Ryan's voice startled her thoughts back to the present, and she looked up. A grunt told her that the large boy had been silenced, in a rather more energetic way than had she a few moments before. She didn't look over at him, to be sure that he was alright; their pace hadn't altered, she could still hear the same number of feet, marching without interruption. Ryan was tough, anyway. Instead she looked around the streets, wondering what it was that might have attracted his attention. Any chance of help? Any possibility of a friend or ally somewhere in the dark alleys and glass-less windows? Instead she saw something else, lurking in the distance; a glimpse of blue, fleeting but clear. Blue cloth. Her mind filled in the rest of the details, and she looked away in disgust. A blue robe; a large figure with blue hair. A member of the Chosen. One of the Guardian's men, emerged from the subterranean tunnels they had made their home. She could almost have spat, so unpleasant was the taste in her mouth at the sight of the figure. So the Chosen were stirring again; putting their feelers out whilst Tribe Fury were locked in their civil war. She couldn't blame them; it was the sort of opportunity she could imagine herself taking, had she still been the warrior queen of old, at the head of her Loco army. This was different though; this was the Chosen, and she hated them as much as she had ever hated any enemy. How could she fail to hate people who claimed to worship Zoot? Her eyes flickered over to Bray, to see if he too had spotted the blue-clad shape in the distance. He showed no reaction, as before, and she decided that he could not have seen that fleeting acolyte. Bray had a tendency to be anything but quiet when the Chosen appeared. A second later, though, she was forced to wonder just how long his oblivion could last. There was a second Chosen figure up ahead; a second, and a third, and a fourth. They were around a corner then, striding into a new street, and she saw something that made her hackles rise; six or seven of them, all in their blue robes, with their almost shaven blue heads. They were standing in a row along the street, hands clasped before them, heads slightly bowed, like an honour guard for the passing parade. One or two of the Fury soldiers greeted them, in what seemed to be a friendly manner, and Ebony felt her heart sink. When she and the others had found the Guardian living beneath the city, he had not had very many supporters left with him. Some; more than she might have expected; but not as many as she was seeing now, emerging from alleys, walking out to stand around them as they passed on down the road. He had built up his support, she realised, in the time since she had left him; since she had gone off with Bray and her Loco army for that fateful battle with the Fury troops. Playing upon the fears of the locals, no doubt, and telling them that the mighty Zoot would protect them from the dangers that filled their city. And they had come to him, as they had come to him before, and now it seemed that they had aligned themselves with Tribe Fury, to compound their growing strength. What deals had been struck; what machinations had been going on beyond her sight, whilst she had been stuck in grimy foxholes fighting battles with the rebels? And where was the Guardian? For a moment she wondered if that might have been the reason for Silver's change in tactics; why he had suddenly sent out the tanks against Racha's army. Had he been won over by the Guardian? Then she remembered the figure she had seen making that triumphant speech, the day that Tribe Fury had first come to the city. She remembered Racha's tales of past battles and past glories. Silver was not a man to have his head turned by some new religion. Not a man to be easily swayed by the Guardian. All the same, all these Chosen, with their friendly greetings for the passing Fury soldiers... It made her pulse beat a little faster, so that she could hear it inside herself; a warning from her senses that something was not right. Something was not good. Something more than normal.

"The Chosen." Bray's voice. She glanced over at him then, for the first time since spotting that first flash of blue. He had come back to himself; returned from whatever dark plains had held his mind since the capture. She recognised the look in his face; the apparent lack of emotion, with glitters in his eyes that said more than facial expressions ever could. There were probably a hundred things that she could have said to him then; a hundred different pointless platitudes that wouldn't have meant anything to either of them. She knew what the sight of the Chosen did to Bray. It wasn't much different to what she felt herself. The pulses still beat fast, and she still heard them; still felt them. Still felt the hatred running inside her. She wanted to move closer to him then, as though by her closeness she could somehow make him feel better. She knew that she wasn't the right person to do that though; it wasn't her closeness that was likely to ease his mind. That was not the nature of their relationship, no matter how she might hope. Somebody else shared that with him, and Ebony turned her eyes to look towards that somebody now. Amber had tensed, and suspicions fluttered in Ebony's mind. Amber showed no particular surprise at the appearance of the Chosen. Certainly her back was turned, so her face was invisible, but she wasn't looking around. Either she was as closed to the world as Bray had been a few moments before, or she had no reason to be surprised. And Ebony was not the only one to have noticed it.

"Amber?" Bray was stepping forward, despite the best efforts of the guards to prevent it. They closed in around him, but he pushed against them, struggling uselessly against strong arms and heavy guns. Ryan let out a shout as well then, trying to go to the aid of his fellow Mall Rat. Even Archer and his men, whatever their feelings for Bray, began to struggle, seeing the opportunity for a moment of rebellion. There was chaos then for a few wonderful minutes, with all of them pressing against their guards, pressing against barriers of crossed guns; a few moments of jumbled noises and criss-crossed threats and insults. Ebony saw Amber's shoulders tense even more, and her step faltered slightly. Bray's voice had got to her; and with all the emotion that had been in it, that was no surprise. He called her again, and this time, very slowly, she turned around. It was quite a sight that must have awaited her then; a scuffle amongst the prisoners and their guards, with Bray in the centre of it; eyes bright; struggling with the people she had brought against him. Her face paled, and Sasha was beside her in an instant.

"Amber!" It was Bray's last attempt before he was swamped by the guards. Sasha was the one to react to it though, pushing the guards back, and showing no fear of the guns. If the hostility Bray couldn't keep from his eyes bothered the younger boy, he didn't show it, and instead held his ground until he was sure that the guards were unlikely to turn violent. He stepped back then, and looked once again towards Amber. The girl looked unsteady; a shadow of her former, strong self. For all their enmity, Ebony had always had respect for Amber. She was strong, determined, powerful. Little enough seemed to scare her or, or to weaken her resolve. This though? This was nothing like the Amber that Ebony had known before. She looked ashen as she stared back at Bray now.

"Bray..." She was searching for the words, but he was shaking his head as though unwilling to listen. "Bray, please."

"The Chosen?" The disbelief was powerful in his voice. "Amber, the Chosen? If you were just working with Tribe Fury I could understand it. With everything you must have been through... But the Chosen...?"

"It's not like that." She was pressing closer to Sasha, which was far from what Bray wanted to see. "Whatever you're thinking, it's not like that."

"Isn't it?" He finally shook off the guards, and walked past them. They didn't stop him. Not, Ebony could see, because Sasha had tried to stop them before, but merely because they had no need to worry. Not only did they outnumber their prisoners, but with the addition of so many of the Chosen as a blue-rinsed honour guard, there was no reason to fear any escape. "Well what should I be thinking, huh Amber? Are you telling me you didn't know about this? They're working together now, aren't they. They must be. And you're trying to pretend that you didn't know?"

"I knew." She couldn't meet his eyes anymore. "Bray, they have Eden. I'm sorry. I know how you feel about them, and about the Guardian, and about all of what they stand for. But they have our son, and they said I'd never see him again. I don't know what they'd do to him, but do you want to think about what the Guardian would do with Zoot's nephew? He's my son, Bray. He's our son. You can't want me to take that kind of a risk."

"The Guardian." Bray looked as grey as Amber. He stopped walking, all the fight seeming to drop out of him in an instant. He had thought at first that he was merely being taken to Silver - to imprisonment, or to the execution that had awaited him before. Neither was a pleasant prospect, especially since both came at Amber's instigation, but to be taken before the Guardian was worse in every way. The Guardian, with his smug smile, and his false charm; Zoot's name on his lips with his every breath. Bray hated him more than he had ever hated anyone; more than Ebony, who felt the same, could ever hate him. The idea of his son in the hands of such a man made him feel sick.

"You understand?" She was begging for forgiveness, but Bray wasn't in the mood for any of that. It was too much; far too much to take in and process. Amber had handed him over to Tribe Fury, but also to the Chosen. He was doubtless now being taken to the Guardian, who would kill him quicker and more surely than Silver ever would, in the middle of what was obviously his return to power. The idea of dying, and leaving the way clear for the Guardian to rebuild his hateful religion, made his stomach churn almost as much as the news that that same enemy had his son. The baby was something he had long thought about, but had never seen; something that it was hard to imagine now, and certainly hard to feel real emotion towards. The Guardian, on the other hand, brought forth emotion aplenty. Bray might have yet to bond with his son, but he had bonded with his brother years before, and it was Martin who seemed to have first claim to his loyalties now. He could do nothing but think of his hatred for the Guardian, and as such couldn't begin to reassure Amber. As the guards pushed him onwards again, and all of them fell back into step, Amber had to turn her eyes away and walk on unforgiven. Ebony almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

"The Guardian." She could hear Bray muttering under his breath, but there was certainly nothing that she could say to him in return. Nothing that would ease his mind, any more than it would her own. It was a blow to her, too, to discover that it was the Guardian who was behind all of this; who was the architect of Amber's treachery. It made everything different. Behind her she could hear her rebel allies muttering too, wondering perhaps at what could have made Silver form an alliance with this gang of apparent monks. They might not know who the Guardian was; who these ranks of blue-robed strangers were; but they knew that something was wrong. It ran through them like a rattle of unease and dismay. Things were not as they should be; here and most likely at the hotel. When she turned around, against the pushing of the guards, she could see what looked like suspicion in Archer's newly revealed eyes. He wanted answers, as did his men, and Ebony foresaw fireworks when those answers came. She only hoped that they would all live long enough to let the fireworks go.

Chapter Text

It was a difficult journey through the streets. Lex had underestimated the number of the enemy, for it seemed that they were everywhere; Furies patrolling, members of the Chosen standing openly on street corners. They had even set up what appeared to be recruitment booths, like the army in days of old; two members of the Chosen to each, resplendent in their robes and freshly applied hair dye. Posters of Zoot adorned the walls where they stood, and still wet graffiti screamed his old slogans in letters a foot high. Power And Chaos in letters as blue as the robes of the Chosen, echoed by Zoot's own immature voice, blasting out of the speakers of small cassette players standing on the pavement. Tribe Fury seemed happy enough with the Chosen's presence, and one or two of the Fury soldiers were wearing blue armbands in an apparent show of support. It didn't make sense to Lex, who had always understood the military mind. Tribe Fury weren't about power and chaos; power, yes. That bit rang true. But chaos? There had been nothing chaotic about Tribe Fury when they had taken over the city. Nothing chaotic in their precise attacks, their smooth assumption of control. A lot had changed though; he knew that. The civil war had made all kinds of things different. Apparently the Furies had been ready to enter into some kind of alliance with the Chosen in order to be sure of defeating the rebels, but for the line between them to have blurred; for Fury soldiers to be openly displaying what appeared to be emblems of the Chosen; there had be more going on than a mere alliance. Lex imagined the Guardian strutting through the hotel, turning heads and winning over idealistic young soldiers. Certainly Zoot was a figure of considerable attraction, capable of capturing the imagination of anybody impressionable enough to be won over by his old ideas. It was frightening to see how many of the people of the city had already thrown in with the Chosen, given how energetically they had fought to rid themselves of the hated fanatics just a short time ago. The Mall, reasoned Lex; all those people with young charges trapped inside the Mall with Trudy and Brady, were beginning to join up as novices in the hope of preventing a tragedy. He didn't really blame them; but it made his job harder. Just because they hadn't wanted to join the Chosen didn't mean that they wouldn't sound the alarm if they saw people sneaking secretly through the streets. There were twice the obstacles then; twice the dangers. Twice the likelihood that he and his friends would get captured before they could find Bray. More than once they had to scramble for better cover. More than once they lay flat in the gutter, or behind piles of rubbish, willing each other into greater silence and certain that they had been seen. It seemed amazing that they had not yet been discovered by either patrolling army.

KC led them to where he had met Bray, the night that he had last seen Amber. It was a mess now, for the tanks had blasted much of it into ruin. A few small splashes of blood showed that there had been some serious fighting going on at some point, and shrapnel and the marks of bullets added to the image of a place where soldiers had been stationed on active service. There were no bodies though. Hunting around, Michaels found signs of a meal; a few metal cups crushed by tank treads, and a tin once containing soup that had been flattened the same way. Lex scowled.

"Looks like they got routed by the tanks the same way we did. They must have had to move on."

"The tanks were coming this way." Michaels was crouching on the ground at his feet, examining the marks on the tarmac for all the world as though they meant something to him. "So anybody who was here probably ran that way." He pointed. "At least at first. They'd have split up if they had any sense."

"Yeah?" Lex agreed, but he was impressed to hear it coming from the boy. Michaels had been of so little use for the most part, with his natural nervousness always holding him back, that it seemed odd to see him playing such an active rôle now. Clearly he knew what he was talking about though, so his Fury training must have meant something to him once upon a time. He looked up at Lex now, eyes bright, and nodded his head slowly.

"Racha is a good strategist, and you don't need to be that to know to split up when you're attacked by tanks. They were probably looking for cover. Maybe heading for streets that would be too narrow for the tanks to follow." He shrugged his thin shoulders. "After that I don't know. Racha would have wanted to find out what was going on back at the hotel, but I doubt they could have got close to it."

"The hotel is miles away." Lex looked about, trying to get his bearings, then pointed. "That way. The pace we've been going it could take us hours to reach it. You're sure they'd have wanted to head that way?"

"Yeah." Michaels looked around at the destruction; the mess caused by the tanks. "You don't know Silver the way that we do, Lex. I suppose you don't want to. But tanks... he'd send them against you without a thought, but he'd never send them against his own people. That's who was here. KC said that Bray and your other friends are with Racha and the rebels, which means that these tanks were sent here against them. Silver would never have authorised that."

"The Guardian then," muttered Lex sourly, guessing that it had probably been that same worthy who had been responsible for sending the tanks to his base too. He only wished that he knew how the enemy had known where to attack. "The Chosen really have got a hold, haven't they."

"It's not a surprise. We know how good they are at taking control." Pride was also examining the rubble. "So supposing they were trying to get to the hotel, do we head that way ourselves?"

"It's as good a start as any." Lex scowled down at Michaels. "You really think Racha would have been that eager to go there?"

"He and Silver are old friends. I don't know why Racha was with the rebels, but everybody knows how he and Silver really feel about each other. He'd want to know why his friend would send tanks out after him. They probably wouldn't know about these Chosen people. Not at first, anyhow."

"We didn't know about them until they took the Mall," agreed Lex. "Not that it took them long to shout about their presence after that. Yeah, okay. We'll head towards the hotel. There's more than one route they could be taking though."

"And don't forget that there's bound to be more of the enemy around, the closer we get to their base," put in Pride. "We'll have to be even more careful than we have been so far."

"Or we could just stand here and wait." Chloe's voice, coming in an urgent whisper, put them all instantly on edge. Lex pushed Tai-San under cover, rather unnecessarily given her speed, and ignoring her fierce glare he hauled Michaels down beside them. The others could reasonably see to themselves.

"What is it?" hissed KC, rather annoyed that Chloe had apparently seen something he had not. Lately she had been getting all too good at the business of moving about in the streets. If he wasn't careful he could find himself superseded by his own girlfriend. Or by the girl he rather hoped would one day become his girlfriend, anyway. Once they stopped arguing long enough to try doing something else.

"Over there." She kept her voice low, clearly enjoying being one up on him. He followed her pointing finger, and saw the group that was coming into view. Half a dozen of the Chosen, marching alongside a band of Tribe Fury soldiers, the Chosen acolytes singing a chanting, dirge-like song of apparent triumph. Lex breathed out in relief. They had got out of sight just in time. He crouched lower, watching the gang advance, a mixture of precise marching and grandiose parading. There were probably twenty Furies, all with rifles, and by the look of things a number of civilians, too - one of whom was walking at the head of the Fury column. She looked familiar, and it was Tai-San who recognised her first, gasping her name in a voice that edged perilously close to being too loud.

"Amber!"

"What?" Lex looked again, and saw that she was right; Amber, walking with the Furies without so much as a gun pointing in her direction. There was somebody a few paces behind her; somebody red-headed and also strikingly familiar, and again somebody beat Lex to the identification. KC this time, his voice showing disbelief.

"Sasha. That's Sasha. They must have gone to the hotel. Bray didn't get to them quickly enough; he can't have. They must have given themselves up."

"I wonder where Eden is." Chloe was looking for a sign of the baby, but couldn't see him anywhere. Lex scowled.

"Never mind the baby. Look who else is there."

"Bray." Pride's voice was very quiet; he was hardly Bray's greatest fan, but he didn't like to see anybody in trouble. "And Ebony." His voice turned gruff. "And Racha."

"And Ryan." Lex's voice sounded odd. KC had told him of his old friend's return to the city, but to see him now was strange nonetheless. Part of him was delighted, but another part of him recognised the danger that Ryan was clearly in, which rather dampened his glee.

"And Salene!" Chloe's feelings mirrored Lex's own, for Salene had been a mother to her during some of their hardest days, and was somebody that Chloe had been missing greatly. To see her again was wonderful; to see her in the midst of a group of Chosen, her hands tied, was anything but. "Lex, we have to do something."

"Tell me about it." Lex didn't have a clue. Their weapons stash, recently discovered in Danni's old home, was still under wraps; and besides, there were some twenty armed Furies to contend with. Battle plans danced around inside his head, but all that he could really think of was a distraction of some kind. Distract, weaken, attack. Somebody had said that to him once; an instructor at the ill-fated military training camp in the hills, perhaps? His instructors had never had to contend with Tribe Fury though; most of them had never gone into battle at all.

"Lex!" KC was expecting him to do something, and preferably before the parade passed by. He scowled. They always expected him to be the one to come up with a plan; which was fair enough, since it was a part of his job. All the same though; all those Furies, the Chosen, not knowing which side Amber and Sasha might fight for. And what if one of them was carrying a baby? He could see no sign of Amber's son, but that didn't mean he wasn't there - and Lex didn't want to be responsible for hurting a baby. He didn't care much for the things as a whole, but that didn't mean that he was willing to take any chances around one. Pride laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Amber will side with us," he said firmly, as though aware of Lex's concerns. His voice was so firm, so certain, that Lex didn't doubt it for a moment. Pride was hardly unbiased where Amber was concerned, and he was not the type to think badly of her, or suspect her of wrongdoing, but his conviction was convincing. Lex nodded.

"You see the baby?" he asked. Pride's eyes were excellent, and if anybody was going to spot a child in that marching band of warriors and monks, it would be him. There was a second of silence, then a head shake that Lex almost didn't see.

"There's no baby there. Maybe it's back at the hotel."

"Makes sense." Something was gnawing at Lex's mind, but he ignored it. "Okay... we're not exactly armed for an attack."

"Maybe." KC sounded faintly defensive, as though worried that he might be about to get into trouble. Lex glared daggers at him.

"KC...?"

"It's nothing much." The boy sank his hands into his pockets, producing three grenades. "I thought I might be able to trade them with somebody. You should never go out with nothing, just in case, and--"

"Never mind." Not caring about the boy's constant attempts to get rich - or whatever its modern equivalent - Lex took the grenades. "If we ever get our lives back to how they were, you're on extra duties for a month for stealing these things. In the meantime... I could kiss you."

"No thanks." KC couldn't stop a smile. "Not in front of your wife, anyway."

"Either way it'll have to wait." Lex reached over to hand Pride one of the grenades. "Make it count."

"I will." Pride was looking solemn; violence had never really been his thing. Grenades were even worse to his way of thinking, but he knew what had to be done. Freeing Amber was important to him, even if it did look as though she wasn't the one who needed saving. He weighed the little bomb in his hand and nodded slowly. "Just give the word."

"Sooner rather than later." Lex was crawling away a short distance, partly to look for a better place from which to make his attack, and partly in the hope that any return fire would be directed away from the others. The motley parade had almost gone past them now, and his eyes lingered on Ryan. Had he grown? He certainly looked taller. More proud. More of a man. Lex wanted him back at his side, and there seemed little point in putting things off, and risking the loss of his chance. He drew in a deep breath, then nodded a cue towards Pride. A second later, when he threw the first grenade, it was with the brief thought that it could well be the last thing he ever did. What the hell, his inner self told him. Might as well go out trying to be useful.

The explosion was beautiful. Lex had seen a lot of explosions, especially in recent weeks, but this latest was a real piece of art. His throw was perfect, at least as far as he saw it; just close enough to the group to shower them with debris, without causing any immediate injury. Several of them stumbled, one or two fell. They all swung around then, rifles pointed at unseen targets. Pride chose that moment to throw his own grenade, clearing their heads so that it exploded on the other side of the column, and swung them around to look for attackers on their other flank. Grinning wickedly, Lex threw the final grenade, and was on his feet and running before it had had its chance to land.

"Hold!" The Fury who turned towards him lost his order in the explosion of the third bomb, and stumbled as the ground shook beneath him. Lex reached him before he could recover himself, and with a neat punch that he was rather proud of, he dropped him and snatched the fallen gun. There was chaos around him, and for a second he was tempted to revel in it, but duty called him back disappointingly quickly. He grabbed Salene, who happened to be nearest, and flung her bodily in the direction of the others. Pride was already there, laying about him with remarkable skill, dropping Furies in their tracks. One or two fired, but the dust in the air spoiled their aim, and they didn't seem to be shooting to kill, anyway. So this group of prisoners was supposed to be brought in alive. That was a stroke of luck. All the same, Lex didn't think that it was a piece of luck that would last. He yelled at Salene to head for cover, and didn't have to repeat the instruction to Ebony. Shouting to Bray, she was already starting to run. Bray, however, had moved only to avoid the unwelcome attention of a Fury guard.

"Amber!" His voice sounded strained; the New Zealand roots were showing again. Lex ran for him, using his stolen rifle to club aside a guard.

"Bray, Amber! Come on! We've only got a couple of seconds. There's too many of them!"

"Amber!" Bray sounded frantic now. "Amber, please."

"No." She took a hesitant step towards him, eyes big and round. "Bray... Eden. I can't... You can't."

"Bray!" Lex reached him at last, grabbing his shoulder. "Come on!"

"I..." Bray's eyes turned from Amber to Lex and back again, showing clear confusion. Amber moved then at last, apparently oblivious to the chaos, the fighting, the shouting. A gunshot sounded out nearby, and Lex shot a nervous glance further down the line. Tai-San had freed some of the prisoners, and they were all were fighting back with gusto - and several of the enemy were still down and out thanks to the explosions. All the same, they didn't have time to stop and chat.

"Bray!" He gave the solid shoulder a tug. "Come on, man! What's the hold up?"

"Bray..." Amber was staring at him as though the rest of the world didn't exist. "I can't leave. You can't leave. He's your son. Please!"

"Look, I don't know what the hell's going on, but we've got to go now. There are too many of them, and confusion only lasts so long." Lex's grip tightened on Bray's shoulder, threatening to bruise the skin. "They've got the Mall. Trudy, Brady - who knows how many others. The Chosen are holding them all hostage, and we've got to get them out. Now come on!"

"Trudy... Brady?" For the first time Bray seemed properly aware of Lex's presence, and his eyes flickered towards him with more certainty. "The Chosen have them?"

"The Chosen have your son!" Amber grabbed his arm, as though planning to play tug of war over his body. "Bray..."

"Bray..." Lex was echoing her unconsciously. "They're recovering the initiative. We have to move. Now."

"Amber." Bray looked back at her, a plea in his face. "We have to leave. The Chosen will kill us. We have to go."

"We have to go back to the hotel! Bray, think about Eden. Are you going to choose your niece over your son? Trudy over me?" She was staring at him in disbelief. "You can't..."

"I'm choosing life over death, Amber! This way I can help both of them. Come with me!"

"No." She was shaking her head, drawing away from him, seeming to shrink into herself. "I can't. I won't leave him. I won't risk him being sent away. Not if I can help it." For a second her eyes lingered on one of the fallen guns, as though seriously considering taking some kind of action; then she took another step back. Sasha was there to catch her, his hands taking her shoulders as his eyes held Bray's.

"I'll look after her," he said simply. Bray merely stared. Sasha and Amber, like a little family unit taunting him with their closeness. For a moment he was almost tempted to do as Amber had asked, just to break the pair up. Lex was pulling at his arm though, and urging him to hurry up.

"Amber..." It was one last attempt that he knew would do no good. She was already turning away from him. Ryan was running past then, arms free now, Tai-San beside him with a knife. Blue-robed Chosen were running towards them; there was just no more time. "Amber, I--"

"Damn it Bray, come on!" Lex was dragging him, and running, and all that Bray could see through the settling dust was Amber being held in Sasha's strong embrace. His heart sank further than he had ever thought that it could go - then he was tumbling over a low wall, and being pushed into an alley, and everything else was gone from sight. Tai-San's knife freed his arms without him really being aware of it, and after that there was nothing but running. Running and stumbling, and fighting back tears, and not really knowing what the hell was going on. He had lost Amber again. After all those weeks of hoping and praying and wishing and wondering, he had found her again; and now in one confused moment he had lost her, and left her far behind. This time he had the awful feeling that he truly had lost her forever. He didn't think she would ever forgive him from running away from their son, and he didn't have to look very far inside himself to find that he didn't blame her. He didn't think he could forgive himself either, and it didn't help at all knowing that there hadn't ever been any choice.

Chapter Text

"You okay?" Ebony was speaking, but Bray didn't really process the words. He understood what she was saying, in some part of his brain, but the dominant part of it couldn't be bothered to interpret the faraway sounds. He didn't answer. "Bray?"

"I'm sorry, mate." Lex threw himself down beside his old sparring partner, and offered him a comradely clap on the shoulder. Around them the others milled uncertainly, the Fury rebels eyeing their rescuers with undisguised suspicion, and their rescuers eyeing them in return with clear dislike. Pride stood off to one side, watching Bray with a deep frown, and obviously thinking about Amber.

"It's been a hell of a mess recently. Losing Amber twice. I know I've never exactly been her best friend, but..." Ebony shrugged. "I don't like seeing you so down, Bray. You'll get her back."

"I ran out on her." He lifted his head as though it weighed several tonnes, and stared straight into her eyes. The intensity of his gaze was off-putting. "She was trying to save our son. Her son, my son. I should have stayed with her, and I didn't."

"They'd have killed you," she told him practically. He nodded. It had, after all, been his own argument.

"Yes. But the baby, Eden, would have been safe. Safer. Now he could be taken away because of me, and he and Amber might never see each other again. I don't blame Amber if she never forgives me for that." He dropped his head again, into his hands this time. "The Guardian. It's always the Guardian. First he took away Trudy and Brady, he tried to take away Martin, in a different way. Then Amber and Eden. At the moment he's got all of them. Why does he keep doing this to my family?"

"Because he's a vindictive sod with a warped thing for Zoot." Lex looked away. They were sheltering in yet another abandoned building; some kind of chemicals plant, as far as he could gather. At some point it had been converted into a home by a tribe of some ilk, but whoever they were, they had been gone for some time. The Locos, the Demon Dogs, the Chosen, Tribe Fury - any of them might have been responsible, along with at least half a dozen other possible suspects. One thing the city was never short of was rampaging gangs looking to hurt their weaker neighbours. "We need to hit him where it hurts, Bray. Him and his Fury allies. Whatever the hell is going on between them, we have to show them that we count too. If we can free the Mall, there are a lot of kids who'll fight with us again. They were going to anyway, until everything went belly up thanks to the Chosen taking all those kids hostage."

"There aren't many of us," pointed out Ebony. She had once successfully taken the Mall, but it had been weakened thanks to a sneak attack by Tribe Circus; and the only opposition in those days had been the Mall Rats anyway. They were hardly comparable to the Chosen, in number, in training, or in strength. She knew how easily defended the place was, especially if the defenders knew what they were doing. Lex scowled.

"There could be more. Others who might help. We've got weapons, anyway. Loads of them - your guess about Danni's place was right, Bray. Not that it's really a great idea to go in there with guns blazing, but it helps to have a few."

"We can't go into the Mall with guns!" Salene was appalled. "All those children..."

"Nobody's going to blast in there and shoot everybody." Lex wanted to snap at her, but reined in the instinct. It was too good to see everybody again, to go spoiling it with his quick temper. Even he could appreciate how good it was to all be back together again; or nearly all, anyway. "Guns are more likely to make people take us seriously though. If they see we've got no shortage of firepower, it'll help us."

"And you say you've got some allies?" Ebony wasn't sure that any plan of Lex's was worth following, but he did have a point about having to free the Mall, if it would help to bring them the support of the city; and this talk of how there 'could be more' people on their side in the meantime was promising. Lex nodded.

"A bunch of them. Not many, about as many as there are of us, give or take. They're the efficient type, though I can't say I like them all that much." Something occurred to him, and he looked over at Bray. "As a matter of fact, one of them seems to know you. You ever heard of a guy called Craig?"

"I've known a few Craigs. Half of the swimming team at school seemed to be called Craig." Bray was frowning, glad of something else to concentrate upon. "Does he use any other name?"

"Not that I remember. He and his friends are real private school types, though. Uniforms, school ties, the works. They call themselves the Badlanders."

"The Badlanders?" Bray straightened up, looking about as though expecting them suddenly to appear. "You're kidding? You've been working with the Badlanders? Lex, do they know about the weapons?"

"No. I didn't trust them. Thought it was best to keep it to myself." Lex frowned. "Why?"

"That Craig." Bray shook his head slowly. "Craig Merchant. Yes, I know him. We were rivals in the old days. I got picked to run in the city cross country trials, and he didn't. He didn't take it well. After civilisation fell, we met up a few times, and he always let that old grudge get in the way. The last time I saw him was some months back."

"You don't trust him then?" Lex wasn't sure whether to feel annoyed or vindicated. Bray raised an eyebrow. He wasn't in a particularly humorous mood, but he could appreciate the drollery of the moment nonetheless.

"Last time I saw him, he was wearing a blue robe. He's no devoted member of the Chosen. He's too self-serving for that. But he sided with them when he felt they could offer him something, and I wouldn't trust him not to side with them again. He's probably been with them all along."

"All along?" Several things flashed through Lex's mind. The way that the Badlanders had turned up just when he had needed rescuing. The way that they had used his name, and the fame of the Mall Rats, to gather allies, then insisted that those allies leave all their children in the Mall. It spoke of a long term plan to him, and it made his blood boil. "The bastard. I knew there was something about him. His friends seemed okay though. Maybe some of them..."

"The Badlanders have always been bad news. They were slave traders in the old days, and worse. Craig's second in command, a good looking guy called Krishnan?" Lex nodded in recognition. He quite liked Krishnan. They had seemed to get along rather well, as though they had a fair amount in common. Krishnan had helped him, he remembered, when he had wanted to rescue Bray from Tribe Fury once before. Craig had opposed that mission, but the fact that Krishnan had supported it suggested that maybe he at least could be trusted. Bray also nodded. "You know him too then. Krishnan used to organise fights for people to make bets on. Fights to the death, if the contestants stayed conscious long enough for things to get that far. He'd grab Strays whenever he could; the sort that nobody would miss; then offer them food and shelter in exchange for them fighting. He just wouldn't tell them that they'd probably be fighting for their lives. I'm surprised you never heard about it, though I suppose the fights themselves were pretty localised."

"I remember." Ebony was nodding. "Zoot and I went to watch once or twice, when it first started up. It was pretty grim. Not real sport at all."

"Boy, they've really been playing me, haven't they." Shaking his head in badly contained frustration, Lex felt like holding his head in his hands, just as Bray had been doing a short time before. "Making me trust them, reeling me in. And all this time..." He looked up. "It was probably them that let the enemy know where we were, the night that the tanks came."

"The tanks came after you too?" Bray nodded his head speculatively. "Yes. Probably was them. I'm sorry, Lex."

"Sorry? I'm going to have to be more than sorry, if the rest of the city ever finds out about this. I'm responsible for what happened to all those kids. It's because of me that they're all locked up in the Mall, with the Chosen ready to brainwash or kill every single one of them. All because I let my ego get the better of me, when some kids said they needed my help." He rubbed his eyes. "Well, it looks like we can't expect any help from the Badlanders, anyway. If we're going to take back the Mall, we'll have to do it alone."

"You're feeling bad." Ryan, who knew Lex better than anyone save perhaps Tai-San, offered Lex one of his gentler smiles. "It's not your fault. You couldn't have known that these Badlanders were tricking you."

"He knew." Lex jerked his head at Bray to indicate who he meant. "He'd never have been taken in by them."

"Yeah, but that's Bray's job. He knows the other tribes. He goes out and meets them. You're supposed to..." Ryan had been about to say 'keep everybody safe in the Mall,' but avoided doing so. Lex could see exactly where he had been going, though, and smiled bitterly.

"Head of security. Right. Keep enemies out of the Mall. Or alternatively, invite them all in, and let them take it over. It can't just be me who thinks this has all been a complete disaster."

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself." Archer, a new pair of mirrored shades acquired from somewhere, stood before them all, arms folded, cold hard attitude restored. He looked Lex up and down, the shades hiding whatever his eyes might have revealed of his thoughts. "Are you a soldier or aren't you?" Lex stared up at him, faintly aggrieved at this interruption, but at the same time stirred out of his self pity. He frowned.

"I haven't been a soldier in a long time; but I am a fighter, yeah. A warrior."

"Then act like one. Every unit has its specialists, and if your intelligence expert isn't available, you have to make do without him - and live with the consequences. It's of no importance now, anyway. What counts is your objective."

"Just who the hell are you?" Lex began to rise to his feet, but Ebony put out a hand to stop him.

"He's supporting you, Lex. Listen to him. He may be an arrogant sod, and a cold-hearted bastard, but he knows what he's doing."

"He's a Fury! We should have left them all behind."

"If we had, we'd never have got out alive." Ryan crouched beside Lex, and nodded up at Archer. "He's worth listening to, Lex. And he'll help us to free the Mall. They all will."

"Will we?" Archer didn't sound convinced. His masked eyes scanned the group, from the dejected Bray and Lex, to the tense KC and Chloe. The young pair seemed to be hiding somebody, but he had no real interest in who it might be. "What concern is it of us what happens to your children? If you get them back, you get your support back from the others in the city. That's not what we want."

"You want the Chosen defeated," claimed Ebony. "They're your enemies too."

"Maybe. Maybe not." Archer clearly didn't much care. Somebody else did though, and he came up from behind, dirty, dishevelled, and looking nothing like the statuesque charmer certain amongst the Mall Rats had come to know quite well.

"She's right." Racha's voice was the same, even if he no longer looked much like himself. His black eyes glittered as he spoke, showing the emergent mania of his character, and the smile that played across his lips was not the warm and playful smile of before. "These Chosen are obviously working with our former colleagues. They must be responsible for Silver's change of tactics. They might even be trying to take over control. It's our job to get rid of them."

"Get the Guardian," Bray told him. "The rest will fall then. A few will be very loyal supporters of the cause, but the rest are only in it for what they think they can get out of it. Like Craig Merchant."

"Your friend." For a second Racha looked the way he had used to, and his eyes showed a certain thawing. "But if we make a strike against the Chosen, the children might be under threat?"

"They could be." Tai-San knew better than anybody how the Guardian's mind worked, and she knew that he might well have given such orders. If anybody attacked the hotel directly, there was no telling what might happen to the imprisoned children. Besides - was it even worth trying to attack the hotel without the support of their various potential allies within the city? Racha nodded slowly.

"And one of these children is important to you?" The question was of course directed at Bray, who nodded slowly.

"They all are," he said honestly. He didn't know who any of them were, but they were nonetheless important. They were alive, after all. Racha's eyes narrowed.

"We were talking, before the tanks came, of a child in the Mall who was special to you. That's who this child is? The one that we said was yours, or Ebony's?"

"Yes." Bray hesitated, unwilling to elaborate, but deciding in the end that he had to. "My niece. And her mother. They're both important to me, and they're important to the Chosen. The Guardian will have something planned for both of them."

"Then we have to get them out, don't we." Racha seemed to be drawing himself together, dismissing the fractures that had apparently been splitting his mind in recent days. He still didn't seem quite himself, but he was making the effort, and was managing to tear his mind away from thoughts of Silver at least for the moment. "I need to know about the Mall. Somebody draw me a plan." He pulled paper and a pen from a pocket, and threw both at Lex. "Mark its weak points and its strongest points, and all the entry points you can think of. You, boy--" this to KC-- "take some of my men, and... is that you, Private Michaels?" The boy, who had been hiding behind KC and Chloe ever since the rescue, rose shakily to his feet. He looked terrified. Racha merely nodded at him. "Good man. You can go with them as well. Get these guns you've all been talking about, or as many of them as you can carry, anyway. And ammunition if you've got it. Bring them back here. Archer, post your guard."

"Sir." Archer reacted to the authority without thinking, not questioning Racha's return to leadership. He turned away smartly. KC looked over to Lex for confirmation.

"Go ahead, KC." Lex nodded his head at his young friend. "Chloe too. Stay low and be careful."

"We will." Delighted to have been trusted with such a mission, Chloe was already raring to be off. "Will you be here?"

"Yes." Racha didn't look at her as he spoke; his mind was already upon plans and manoeuvres. "If we have to move out we'll leave signs. My men can read them. You. It's Lex, isn't it?"

"Yeah." Gruff, and beginning to resent the loss of his command, Lex glared up at Racha. "What?"

"You finished that plan yet?"

"Huh?" He hadn't even started it, but didn't especially want to admit to that. "No."

"Then hurry up. There are a lot of soldiers out there who want us back in custody, or dead. If we're going to take the Mall, we need to do it quickly. Get drawing. Bray?"

"What?" Watchful and suspicious, Bray eyed his former tormentor without enthusiasm. Racha smiled in smooth reply.

"Finished feeling sorry for yourself?"

"Not really." He dredged up a smile of his own. "Why?"

"I want to know about the Chosen. Everything you know about them. What they want, what they stand for, who this Guardian guy is. Everything. Know your enemy. Right?"

"Right." It was the last thing that Bray wanted to think about, but he was the right one of them for the job, and he knew it; even if Racha had chosen him without really being aware of that. Tai-San was possibly better qualified to talk of the inner workings of the Guardian's complicated mind, but what drove him; what ideals he followed and beliefs he held; were of particular meaning to Bray. He nodded slowly. "Okay."

"Good." Racha sat down beside him. KC and his little band had already gone, the small, green-haired boy leading them proudly, his ego blooming. Lex sketched out a rough plan of the hotel, with Ryan helping where necessary with the writing of notes, and Salene hovered over them, trying to put as much distance between herself and the remaining Fury rebels as she could. They made her uneasy, even though she had been amongst them for some time now. They had a singularity of purpose, a militaristic fervour, that was unsettling.

"So." Folding his arms, looking like an oddly threatening child in search of a good story, Racha smiled his increasingly less than sane smile. "Why don't we start with this person Zoot. Tell me about him. Everything you can think of that's relevant. And don't leave anything out."

"Everything." Bray wasn't sure - didn't know where to begin, or how to phrase the telling. Zoot was still too raw a wound, and probably always would be. All the same, Racha was right. It was information that needed to be shared, and which might somehow be of use, at some point. He struggled to gather his thoughts. "Zoot. Okay." And he began to speak, and began to tell his enemy of the brother he had lost to madness. In a curious way, to his surprise, he found that it helped.

Jack had been busy in the loft for hours, although for the most part Luke still didn't know what he was doing. Following instruction as all assistants to genius - even eccentric genius - should, he had made several forays downstairs, and on each occasion barely escaped discovery. Each time he had clambered back up to the loft, told Jack that he wasn't going back downstairs again, and been assured that there wouldn't be any need. And of course, half an hour later, Jack had another list of bits and pieces that he absolutely had to have, as soon as possible.

They had piles of things now. The jam jars filled with flammable liquids, Luke understood. The home-made smoke bombs were likewise easy to understand, as were his own contribution; a pair of makeshift blowpipes that fired darts tipped with acid. They wouldn't do much damage, but they would sting more than a dart on its own. The other things though - them he wasn't quite so clear on. The chunky collection of electrical components was a jammer, apparently, which would stop a radio signal being sent. The balloons, stolen from the box of toys for the children, were going to be flour bombs - although they didn't actually have any flour - and water bombs. Always supposing they could get hold of some water. What little they had to live on wasn't really enough to give them an arsenal.

And the rest of it. The heavy duty elastic bands cannibalised from long forgotten sources, and stored in Jack's box of Things That Might Be Useful One Day. They were going to be catapults, which would hopefully fire a variety of ammunition; heavy nuts and bolts, empty cartridge cases weighted with junk. There was something else, too; some other kind of electrical device, powered by a large battery that had been the cause of Luke's narrowest escape. Jack was working on it now, toying with wires cannibalised from his most recent battery charger, as well as several other sources. Luke didn't know what he was making, but he imagined it would prove to be of use - always supposing somebody did one day come to try to free the Mall. If not then these hastily constructed weapons would be no more than toys, for there was little that Jack and Luke could do alone.

"What do you suppose they're all doing?" Luke was sitting by one of the tiny windows, peering out into a grey, empty street. He was supposed to be attaching rags to the jam jars, hopefully completing their transformation into Molotov cocktails, but the window, with its faintly depressing panorama, was rather distracting. Jack glanced up from his wires.

"Who?"

"Lex. The others. Where do you think they are?"

"Not far away." Jack stretched, rubbing his lower back. "Lex will be thinking of ways to get in here."

"With so few of them? KC, Pride... it's not the biggest army ever, is it."

"Maybe it won't need to be." Jack knew very little about fighting, but he did have a good mind. "It's not the number, is it. It's how you attack."

"Yeah, but this place is easy to defend. You know that. It's why you all chose to live here, and why the Chosen picked it as a base when we first took over the city. Now, with the lobby all broken up, and the windows boarded like it is, it's even easier. Several of the old entrance ways are closed off now. I know you did it to make the place look derelict, and that probably worked. I'd guess it's why Tribe Fury never found you. But it's also played right into the Chosen's hands just now."

"Yeah. I suppose so. Also lost us the drain, when we filled it in for extra security. Would have made a great way for Lex to sneak in."

"No. The Chosen know about it." Luke scooted over to sit beside Jack. "Don't feel bad. You did what you had to do at the time. It's not like you could have known that this would happen."

"I know." Jack scowled down at his latest invention. His eyes were hurting, his back ached, and his fingers were stiff. He had been going without a proper break all day. "I wish I knew what the Chosen are up to. I guess it wasn't hard for them to find out about all the kids being here; but what are they planning to do next? They can't really hope to keep working alongside Tribe Fury? And surely they don't think they can beat them?"

"Maybe. They seem to be working together for the moment, but the Guardian won't stand for a joint empire. He probably thinks he can get everybody in the city behind him, and maybe drive the Furies out. He honestly believes that everybody loves him, and will follow him and Zoot." He shrugged, almost apologetically. "He still thinks I'm his loyal lieutenant. That's why he took me with him, when he made that underground base in the sewers. He can't believe that the rest of us don't want to be a part of his fantasy."

"Great. So he thinks he can put together a loyal army of devoted Zoot converts, and go up against Tribe Fury. Armed with what? Power and chaos slogans?"

"Probably."

"It would be a massacre."

"Yeah." Luke was looking increasingly restless and awkward. "It's all nuts. Always was, wasn't it. I used to be a part of it, and now... now I can't understand why."

"Because it's nuts out there, and the Guardian looked like he had a way to make it less nuts. Loads of people fell for his talk." Jack thought back to the days trapped in the Mall, listening to the speeches and the lessons supposed to turn them all into members of the new religion. Plenty of people had succumbed, and it wasn't up to him to blame them for it. He made a few more adjustments to his wires and their attendant batteries, then put them down and leaned back against the wall. "I'm sick of this place. It's cramped and uncomfortable, and there's not enough air. Much more of this, and I'll be willing to join the Chosen."

"Yeah. If we're lucky we'll be given a half decent meal before we're executed." Luke was feeling morose again. "You really think the others are coming, Jack?"

"They'll come. If they're still alive, they'll come. Lex is like that. He doesn't give up. I know he always acts like he doesn't give a toss about any of us, and maybe he doesn't - but he wouldn't like to see the Chosen win, either. This is his home turf, and he'll protect it."

"I hope so."

"I know so." Jack scowled at all his strewn equipment, and his myriad of home-made weaponry that might all turn out to be so much unnecessary junk. "Is there anything to eat?"

"A can of rice pudding." Luke threw it at him. "I didn't really get much of a chance to look for food. I had some pretty lengthy shopping lists, remember?"

"Doesn't matter. We should be getting the water for the bombs, anyway. Think you can get up onto the roof? The rain reservoir should be full."

"So long as there's no guard posted up there, it'll be easy." Luke sighed. "Just seemingly pointless."

"It's never pointless." Jack pointed to the old hot water tank, which occupied so much of the space in this section of the loft. "There's some rubber tubing up on the roof. See if you can run a length down into that, and then we won't have to carry the balloons up and down the ladder. And stay low. We don't know who might be on the other roofs."

"If I get shot, we'll find out." Luke headed for the hatch that led up to the roof; not his favourite route for getting up there, since it had none of the stability or directness of the stairs. "If that happens..."

"If that happens, I'll run out and shoot back with one of your blowpipes." There was only the faintest trace of sarcasm in Jack's voice. "Now hurry up."

"Because the rescue squad are already hammering on the doors, needing our support." Luke sighed, and eased open the hatch. All they needed was for somebody to be near to it, and all of this would be over in a heartbeat. Fortunately the roof was deserted. He leaned back down to Jack, and grinned at the bright red head beneath him. "Better luck next time."

"You haven't finished yet."

"Thanks." It wasn't hard to find the rubber tubing, intended as part of the system that carried rainwater from the purifiers down to the all important taps in the Mall below. He climbed up the side of the big water tank, and dropped one end of the tubing down into the deep reservoir of water, then laid out the rest of it along the roof, back to the hatch. There was just enough to reach the water tank, and after some heavy sucking to create a siphon, Jack pushed it through one of the holes that had once carried a supply pipe. The water rang surprisingly loudly into the tank, and he winced.

"I hope that doesn't sound as loud as I think it does."

"Sounds pretty loud to me." Luke swung back down into the loft. "They'll probably think there's a leak, after all that rain. Not going to think it's two people hiding up here trying to make water bombs to throw at them, are they."

"Suppose not." The smaller boy sighed in his usual dramatic fashion. "Okay. The flour bombs."

"Filled with invisible flour."

"Not necessarily. This is a big loft. There's a lot of dust up here. There's also a whole lot of... guano. From the birds and the bats."

"Guano? What the hell is guano?" Luke caught the expression on Jack's face and frowned. "Or don't I want to ask?"

"Just find something you can use as a pair of gloves, and come on." Jack was already on his way. "And bring a sack, if we have any."

"An old carrier bag do?"

"As long as it doesn't have any holes in the bottom."

"Fine." Luke retrieved the required bag, and hurried after his companion. "I have a powerful suspicion that I'm going to be hating you before much longer."

"You're probably not wrong."

They bent to their somewhat distasteful task in the midst of yet another squabble, which only intensified when Luke saw what guano really was. He scooped it up nonetheless, dry, powdery and smelling revolting, and felt highly grateful that he wasn't the one who was going to have it thrown at him. So much for sitting down to share that tin of cold rice pudding, he thought morosely. Not that cold rice pudding was exactly inviting, but it had been a very long time since he had eaten anything at all. He wasn't altogether sure that he would be wanting anything by the time he had stuffed half a dozen balloons with the dusty contents of the carrier bag. All the same, he had nothing better to do; no better plans. It wasn't better to be sitting around up here with nothing to do and nothing to hope for. So whatever his misgivings, and whatever his hunger and discomfort, he spent the next half hour inflating balloons, stretching their necks, and filling them up with water or powder. Most of the time they escaped before the work was half completed, and by the end of it his trousers were wringing wet and plastered in dust of a highly suspicious origin. He tied the neck of the last balloon, and laid it on the floor at his feet.

"Finished. And if anybody is coming, they better come before these things deflate. I don't want to go making any more of them." He stretched his stiff fingers and stood up, washing his hands in the hot water tank. They had disconnected the tubing when it had looked like they were about to be flooded, and the sound of the trickling water had gone. It was almost a shame. The loft had grown oppressive in its silence and its stillness, and though Jack seemed to see something friendly in its dark corners, Luke most certainly did not.

"So have I." Jack also stood up. "What time is it?"

"Like that makes any difference?" Luke checked his watch, one of the only ones Jack knew of in the city that was still kept accurate. It had fascinated him at first, for he had long got used to there being no such thing as real time, real hours, real days. Now he asked for such information only when he wanted to be distracted. "It's eight o'clock. That's pm, in case you were wondering."

"Oh." Jack rubbed at his eyes, smearing the streak of white paint that decorated one cheek. "Don't suppose you've got any chocolate?"

"Oddly enough, no. I've got a tin of rice pudding. It's not even chocolate flavour. Jack, can we take a break and actually eat something?"

"Yeah, I guess. There's nothing else we can do right now anyway."

"You don't want to organise another little trip downstairs, and collect some more bric-a-brac?"

"I don't think so." Jack picked up the can from where it had lain since Luke had thrown it at him earlier, and turned it over to look for the ring pull. His fingers paused, though, before he tugged off the lid. "Did you hear something?"

"My stomach rumbling?"

"No." Jack hesitated a moment longer, then shrugged and started once again to open the tin. Again he stopped. "Are you sure you didn't hear anything?"

"Jack, will you just open the damn can?!" Luke reached out to snatch it away, but before he grabbed it, he too stopped. "Hang on. What was that?"

"Exactly! You see?!" Jack tossed the can to him, then stood up and went to the door that led back down to the Mall. He tugged it open. Sounds rose more easily to them then; shouts, clatters; the sounds of a clear disturbance. "Do you think...?"

"Are you kidding? Lex? No way." Luke pushed past him, swinging down the ladder to the next floor down. It was taking a risk, but usually the top floor was left empty, save when the regular patrols went by. Jack almost fell down next to him.

"You can't say that doesn't sound like there's something going on?"

"Maybe. But how would anybody have got in?" Luke led the way to the main staircase, peering down. "It's crazy to think it, Jack. I want it to be true as much as you do. More. I hate that damn attic! But how could anybody get into the Mall without getting captured or shot?"

"I know." Jack's shoulders slumped, and he looked suddenly very young. "But something's got them in a whirl down there, right?"

"We can take a look I suppose." The sight of his usually enthusiastic companion becoming so dejected was enough to make Luke soften. "Just be careful. I don't want to get captured after spending all day making those weapons. It'd be hell of a waste."

"I suppose it would." Jack stepped back to allow the other boy to lead the way, and together they crept down the top flight of stairs. It was easier to see what was going on then, for the banister gave them a view of what remained of the lobby. Creeping down a few more steps, they could see to the door of Jack's old workshop, and the place where they had first seen the Chosen as they had entered the Mall. A couple of blue-robed guards stood there now, night sticks in hand, apparently talking to someone that the two watching boys couldn't see. There were other voices too; other people who moved in and out of sight, all dressed in blue and carrying night sticks or rifles. Rifles. Luke's eyes narrowed. The Chosen had never really gone in for guns in the past. Apparently they really had made this a joint operation with Tribe Fury. He could almost respect the Guardian for that; using an enemy to help gain control of the city. He was probably doing his best to convert the Fury troops as well, amalgamating his own forces with theirs. Clever. He was a man deserving of some respect, anyway, even if he did make Luke's skin crawl these days.

"What do you think is going on?" whispered Jack. Luke shrugged.

"No idea. Looks like they're talking to someone. Whoever it was must have been let in by the guards, but all that shouting doesn't make it seem like it's anybody they're happy to see."

"Somebody on our side then?" Jack's enthusiasm came out for an encore, but Luke didn't feel nearly so cheerful. Not since whoever had just entered the Mall had clearly been captured without accomplishing anything. He crept down another couple of stairs, but still couldn't quite see who it was. He just saw some of the kids, creeping out of the corridor, watching the Chosen guards with wide eyes. Trudy was there too, coming up behind them. Crawling down beside Luke, Jack saw her step falter. He couldn't see her face properly, but he heard her gasp, and could only imagine her widening eyes.

"Bray!" She was running forward then, and the guards with their night sticks were rushing to stop her. Jack's hands tightened on the banister when he saw the force they used, but he was sensible enough to know that there was nothing he could do. There was no need to intercept her like that; what could Trudy do? One girl of no great size, with all those armed guards to stand against her? It was a display of strength, he knew; a way of showing the young children gathering around that they should never try to stand up to the might of the Chosen, and it left an unpleasant taste in the mouths of both watching boys.

"Trudy!" For a second Bray was visible, running towards the girl he had known for so long; then two guards stepped in front of him, pulling him back to where Jack and Luke could no longer see him. Trudy was struggling though, still trying to get to him, and after a second the guards let both of them go. They ran towards each other, hugging fiercely in the centre of what was left of the once grand lobby.

"Bray." Jack wasn't sure whether to grin broadly, or feel sick to the stomach. He seemed to be settling for both. "He wouldn't just walk in, would he? I mean, he'd know he'd be caught. And this is the Chosen. They hate him."

"He's either lost his mind, or he's got something up his sleeve." Luke began to edge back up the stairs, suddenly afraid that they might be seen at what might just prove to be a crucial moment. "We should get hold of the weapons, Jack."

"You think?" Delighted, Jack followed him up, casting one last look back at the pair in the lobby. They had separated now, and the guards were closing in around them. "You think we should attack straight away?"

"Not quite, no. But if something is going to happen, and he hasn't just broken in here like an idiot, I don't think it'll be long." Hauling himself back up the ladder to the attic, Luke emptied out the rest of the mess from the carrier bag, and filled it up with the doctored jam jars. "Is all of your stuff ready to go?"

"I suppose."

"Good." Luke clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm sorry Jack. I've been pretty negative so far, but it looks like you were right. You've done a good job here today."

"You hope. This could all be about nothing. Bray might just have walked into a trap."

"Yeah, but we're not going to think that way." Luke stared at him, new strength in his eyes. "Right?"

"Right." Stuffing his pockets with his catapults and their ammunition, Jack hefted up the battery with its various wires, and hurried back to the ladder. If they were lucky, this was the beginning of the end. He didn't want to think about other possibilities. Like Luke, he just wanted this to end.

Chapter Text

Bray didn't think he had ever felt so exposed as when he had walked up to the Mall and let the guards usher him inside. All the way he had expected just to be shot; after all, it wasn't as though they had any special reason to keep him alive. He was a known enemy of the Chosen, and any properly loyal members would know that. He had no idea how loyal these ones were, but for them to have been picked for such a detail suggested that they were amongst the most trusted recruits; and either way he was taking a big risk. They checked him for weapons with predictable heavy-handedness, but they didn't touch the pair of necklaces that he was wearing. He had been counting on that.

"Bray." Trudy was behaving as though she hadn't seen him for years. He wasn't sure how long it was; not anymore. He just knew that it was wonderful to be back with her again. Strange how she could have annoyed him so much for so long, and yet always be so welcome a sight when he returned to her. He held her hand as the guards ushered them out of the lobby and back along the corridor. There were kids everywhere; clustered in groups, watching with big, round eyes. Some he recognised, most he didn't.

"How's Brady?" he asked in the end. He was thinking about his son, and Trudy's daughter seemed just as important right now. If she was alright, Eden could be too. If Trudy was allowed to keep Brady, surely Amber would be allowed to keep Eden?

"Fine. Growing every day. Missing her uncle." She squeezed his hand. "Bray, I thought I'd never see you again. For so long we thought you were dead, and then you weren't, and then there was no word either way... I was so worried."

"Shut up," one of the guards told her. She scowled, without bothering to turn around and direct the glare at him. Bray smiled.

"Things were complicated." The smile had felt like an empty one to him, and clearly Trudy saw that it was not especially real. She knew him too well.

"Are you really okay?" she asked. He shrugged.

"I've been better. A whole lot better."

"I said, shut up." The guard pushed the pair of them onwards. "Now hurry it up."

"We're hurrying." Bray's hand went to the two necklaces, toying with them restlessly. He had to time his moment, and he had to time it well. They were in the main corridor at the moment; another turn, another few paces, and there were windows on his right. Big windows, that looked out into the street, all boarded up now. Other windows, smaller, higher up in the wall and still letting in light. They were less of a security risk since it was harder to see in through them, and only a madman would try to break in through them. A crazy man or Lex, which might well be the same thing. Very slowly he squeezed Trudy's hand, and very slowly she squeezed back. She knew that something was coming. He trusted her to trust in him and let it happen.

He moved so fast that it was a surprise even to him, whipping the two necklaces from his throat and hurling them to the ground. They hit hard, hard enough to smash the two large beads that hung from each chain, spilling dark liquid onto the floor. The liquids mingled, connecting together with a fizz and a hiss, and immediately smoke began to rise. It came in clouds; thick, copious clouds, billowing up from the floor in a volume apparently hugely disproportionate to the amount of liquid that had triggered it. The chemical reaction was an impressive one, and it was a second or more before Bray tugged Trudy to one side, and reached, in the same scrabbling, half-desperate movement, for a small, brightly coloured cylinder hidden inside his shirt. He thought for a moment that he had lost it, but eventually his fingers scraped against something; a length of cord, attached to one end of the cylinder. He snatched at it and pulled, and seconds later the cylinder was tumbling out of his shirt and onto the floor. The guards nearby were yelling and dashing about, but for the most part they were taking no notice of the twosome crouched on the floor. Bray was under no illusions about that lasting, however, and was trying to watch them, the various small children present, Trudy, and the little device now trying to roll away from him across the floor. Trudy pounced on it, and caught it before it could roll under the heels of the scattered guards.

"A rape alarm?" It wasn't by any means what she would have expected him to be carrying, but he gave her a smile and a nod.

"Set it off. You know how?"

"Yes. We used to get talks you know, back at school in the old days." She held it up, and gave one end a good, hard tug. Even as she did so she was flinching away. Trudy had heard an alarm like this before - Bray hadn't. When the wild, screeching undulations broke forth from the comparatively tiny cylinder, he jerked backwards, shocked, and crashed into one of the guards. They fell together, rolling, and Trudy lost sight of them in the clouds of smoke. Somebody was throwing water on it, trying to defeat the billowing clouds, but the smoke was apparently impervious. Climbing back to her feet, Trudy hurried forward, yelling for Bray above the manic howling of the alarm. Smoke blew in her face. She saw nothing else.

And then the glass above her exploded inwards in a shower of sharp rain, and she gave a cry and ran back; back towards the huddled children to shepherd them away. There were people; just shapes in the smoke, bursting through the windows and jumping down. One, two, three, five, seven - she didn't know how many, and she couldn't see enough detail to know if they were people that she knew. She saw only that they were not wearing robes, which was reason enough to be glad of their presence. Beyond that they might have been anyone.

"Trudy, what's going on?" A boy no more than seven years old - Daniel, she told herself. They all had names, just as long as she could remember them - was grabbing at her arm. She smiled at him, as reassuringly as she could. In here they were all her children - she was mother to every one of them, and it was always to her that they turned. Lately there was nobody else.

"It's okay," she told him. She believed it. Bray had made the smoke. It had to have been as a distraction, and then the alarm had been a signal. These people leaping through the windows - they were here to help, they had to be. But already it could be too late. Already there were more guards, racing down the corridor from both sides. The smoke blew, in the slipstream of so many struggling bodies, and she saw Lex, dropping a Chosen guard with a solid punch. Bray ebbed back into view, tangled with a pair of their guards from earlier, and she fought the desire to rush to his assistance. She had the children to think about. Snatching Daniel's hand, and shouting to the others, she made a break for it down the corridor. Several of the guards turned as though to stop her, but they had more pressing matters to deal with. There were perhaps twenty or more intruders now, all of them with guns, though none of them had fired as yet. The Chosen were not so circumspect. A bullet crashed into the wall just above Trudy's head, and fighting the urge to duck, she swung little Daniel up into her arms, and shouted at the children to run. Run they did, down the corridor, around the corner, out of the smoke and the immediacy of the rape alarm's nauseating sound. The other children were gathered at the door of their playroom, gazing out into the corridor with wide, questioning eyes.

"Get back!" She ushered them all back inside, calling to the older children to help her to shut the door. They reacted with the speed of young veterans in the fighting game, slamming it shut, and building up a barrier in front of it, of cushions, chairs and the larger of their toys. She gathered them all together then, on the far side of the room - the big ones, the small ones, the tiny ones - and settled little Brady down beside her. Her daughter seemed happy enough, oblivious to smoke, noise and people fighting. Trudy might have envied her, had she been able to spare the time to think about it. Instead she could only count and recount the children, and hope that they were all in here, and were safe. She knew all too well that at any moment the Chosen could choose to make good their threats and begin executing their young hostages. The Chosen kept their promises; on that score at least they could be trusted.

"Trudy?" There was a little hand tugging at her sleeve. Judy, as far as she remembered. Hell, when had she become so bad with names? When she had been charged with looking after so many children, or just when the windows had broken above her head?

"What?" she asked, taking care that her voice should be as level and as calm as possible. Judy looked towards the door.

"Are they friends?" she asked. Not What's going on? Not What are those noises? She knew what fighting sounded like; what gunfire was. She knew to ask the important questions instead; which side were the combatants on?

"Yes, they're friends," she told the girl. Some of them at least. Who the hell have you brought with you, Bray? she wondered. Just who were those people fighting her captors, and what would happen once it was all over, whichever side happened to win? It was horrible to be so impotent, but she knew that she was doing the right thing. Her first responsibility was to the children. Let the others take care of themselves.

'The others' were not doing too badly. They seemed to be evenly matched for numbers, and less than half of the Chosen had guns. The rest had their night sticks which, whilst they might be useless against the more heavily armed intruders, were fine against those of them, like Bray and Chloe, who were not armed. Chloe, needless to say, was not supposed to be a part of the attacking army, but had gone along anyway. Salene was still looking for her outside.

"I can't believe it." Sheltering on the stairway, Luke glanced down at Jack. "I'd ask you to pinch me and see if it's for real, but you'd only do it too hard."

"It's for real." Jack's eyes were wide. "They really came, Luke."

"Yeah. We should probably help them." They stayed where they were for a moment, drinking in the sight of billowing smoke and battling figures all spilling into the broken lobby, then glanced at each other again.

"We should probably help them." This time it was Jack who said it, and he said it with a broad grin. Luke nodded.

"Race you." They made a dash then, for their waiting collection of jerry-built weaponry. One of the water balloons popped instantly and, soaking wet, the over-excited duo all but slid down the top flight of stairs. Luke laughed. It felt highly inappropriate, but for some reason that made it all the funnier.

"Don't touch the banister," ordered Jack, who was winding wires around the metal support struts. Luke blinked at him. He didn't argue. You didn't argue with Jack when he had one of his plans underway. Instead, carried away on the spur of the moment, he merely hurled one of the balloons over the banister. Quite by chance it struck one of the Chosen square on the top of the head, and showered him with evil smelling dust.

"Have you got that jammer turned on?" Choosing not to whoop with delight at the success of his first missile, Luke looked back to Jack instead. The smaller boy nodded.

"It ought to stop them reporting in about this. As far as I know. I mean, I can't be sure."

"You're a bloody genius, Jack."

"Yeah. I know." Grinning wildly, Jack grabbed another of the balloons, and hurled it from the stairs. He was a genius - but he was a lousy shot. The balloon whirled and flopped its way across the lobby, and slammed into the back of Lex's head. Jack ducked. Luke laughed.

It was by no means a light-hearted fight. The guns saw to that even when the fights and the night sticks and the plain and simple anger didn't - but there was a chaos to it all that might have been funny under different circumstances. For Jack and Luke the humour soon faded away, when they saw the blood on the lobby floor, and heard the cries of pain. They didn't stop though; they knew that they couldn't. Several of the Chosen had wrenched the guns away from their attackers. There were bullets ringing out every which way, people slipping on water, dust and mud. Every so often somebody tried to take to the stairs, but every time they snatched at the banisters to steady themselves on the slippery steps, and Jack's set up of battery and wires sent them stumbling away again. It wasn't a powerful enough battery to cause real damage, but it was enough to discourage any attempt to gain higher ground, at least for now. Luke's blowpipes, with their acidic darts, added to the confusion and the irritation, even though his aim, in the chaos, was not much better than Jack's. Most of the darts missed their targets, but enough struck home to cause pain, and to distract a few people who might otherwise have fought rather better. The catapults served likewise, and the smoke bombs confused everybody's aim. It was the Molotov cocktails, though - small as they were - that really made a difference.

Ryan saw the first one. He was laying about him with his fists, having abandoned his gun, battering any of the enemy who came within range, and trying not to notice that the Chosen were doing far better than he would have liked. The water, dust and smoke bombs that exploded around him every so often were a clever distraction, but they hampered his own side as much as the enemy, which made them only partially effective. There was no doubt that they had saved lives, but they were decidedly indiscriminate over who they saved, and when. When the first explosion made the floor tremble beneath his feet, however, and showered him with the dust and water that the balloons had already liberally scattered him with once, he stumbled backwards and swore eloquently. Not being the most eloquent of people much of the time, it was something of an indication of his surprise.

"Bloody hell!" Luke, who had thrown the bomb, stared at his hand as though to chastise it for the motion. "Jack!"

"What?" Jack was unrepentant. He had made bombs. He had helped. That was good. His frequent lack of practical thought rather prohibited him from thinking about what was likely to happen when bombs got thrown about in a crowded lobby. The practical side of things was Dal's job.

"I..." There was no point in arguing. The battle had to be won. Luke threw another bomb as best he could, and thanked the heavens that they were only small. He didn't think he could kill anybody with them. Just annoy them. A lot. Another explosion stirred up the dust again, and spattered several people with water. Luke got the distinct impression that he and Jack were going to be shot no matter who won this fight.

The battle raged for perhaps half an hour in all, but even though the Chosen put up a good fight, the Molotov cocktails, as well as the water bombs, eventually took their toll more upon the enemy than upon the liberators. Perhaps it was mere chance, or perhaps it was Luke and Jack becoming more proficient at throwing, but eventually the Chosen, many wounded, all dripping wet and exhausted, were lined up against one wall and forced to surrender. Jack let out a triumphant cheer that earned him a ferocious glare from Lex, who was as soaked as the enemy and not appreciating it. As the dust settled, and the water began to drain away, a vengeful Ebony marched the Chosen off to a temporary holding area. Jack disconnected his contraption from the banisters, and in celebration of what he saw as his genius, slid rather gracelessly down them. KC and Chloe congratulated him joyfully, and Lex glared. Archer and his Fury rebels paid him no attention at all.

"We won!" All but ready to begin dancing, KC gave Chloe an impetuous hug, then broke off looking hugely embarrassed. Lex glared at him.

"Put that gun down, or you'll shoot somebody. And where the hell did you get it from, anyway? I thought I said you weren't coming in here armed?"

"I got it from one of the Chosen." KC put it down obediently enough, then grabbed Chloe's hands and spun her around in a merry circle. "We won!"

"We've freed the Mall. Temporarily." Lex looked down at himself, soaking wet and filthy as he was, and scowled. "Jack, what the bloody hell was all that about?"

"I was helping." Rather put out, Jack ceased pounding KC on the back in his triumph, and stood looking wounded instead. Luke stood beside him, faintly chastened.

"Helping? That what you call it?" Deciding that his shirt was a write-off, Lex considered peeling it off, but eventually chose not to. He had kept some spares in the Mall, but he had no idea if they would still be where he had left them. "Forget it. For now. We have other things to worry about."

"Such as?" asked Bray. He was coming over, collecting up fallen weapons with distaste, and stacking them in the centre of the room. Lex gestured about.

"Such as this place. The Chosen are bound to be in radio contact with their headquarters. They'd have to be, wouldn't they, for their threats about the kids here to be of any use. If they got off any messages, there could be reinforcements heading our way now. We probably don't have long before they get here. We should think about barricades, and getting the kids out."

"Shouldn't matter." Growing back to his full height again as his moment of self-pity subsided, Jack was back to his previous bouncy demeanour. "I built a jamming device. It's a bit flimsy, but it should have done the job. I turned it on as soon as I realised that Bray had come here. Figured there had to be something going on." He grinned broadly, well aware of the quiet admiration in Bray's eyes, as well as the less subtle praise shining in KC's face. It was pleasant to bask in the moment; Jack was by no means the least conceited of boys. Lex didn't smile, but his glare softened, and he nodded in the end.

"Okay. Go and turn it off. I don't want anybody getting suspicious if they're trying to contact the people here. No, hang on. Do you know how many Chosen are based here?"

"Not really. We've been hiding, so we haven't had a good look about. I'd guess they all joined in for the fighting, unless somebody made a break for it." Luke shrugged. "Not that the Chosen do usually run, but you can never know what their orders were."

"I'll begin a sweep." Archer signalled to his remaining men, and they marched smartly from the room. Of all the Fury rebels only Racha remained now, for the others had escorted the prisoners away, and had not yet returned.

"Making sweeps for the strays, cleaning up your messes. You'll be wanting to rebuild the place next." He was restless. "We've helped you; you've got your Mall back. This baby you care so much about is safe now, Bray. As safe as anybody in the world these days. Now spread the word, take the children out into the streets, and get your army together. Share out your guns. And come with me to the hotel."

"The hotel?" Jack whistled. "Not meaning any disrespect, especially as I don't know who the hell you are, but the hotel? That's where the enemy is."

"It's where my friend is." Racha had ceased all pretence of caring for his rebellion; his interest now was solely in Silver, and in finding out what had happened to his friend. "We all want the Guardian gone. Dead, exiled, imprisoned - I don't care in the slightest. But he's done something to Tribe Fury, and I want to know what."

"He'll have wriggled his way in." Luke spoke up with the awkwardness he usually displayed when talking of the Chosen. "He's an expert at that. He'll make himself appear to be a friend, and he'll smile and say what he knows you want to hear. He can make you trust him just by smiling at you the right way. Then by the time you realise that he's psychotic, and that it's all about his religious fanaticism, it's too late." He looked awkward. "I know him very well."

"Whatever." Racha's dark eyes sought out Bray once again. "We need to make a move. It won't take long before somebody realises what's happened here. By the time the news gets through to the hotel, we should already have spread it ourselves amongst the civilians. The Independents. Got them to come with us."

"He's right." Lex would rather have liked to rest, but he could see the sense in what Racha was saying. If they were to keep the initiative, it was important to keep moving. "Bray - round up the kids. Trudy's been using the old furniture store as a playroom for them. They're probably in there. KC, go and get Salene. She'll be useful in handling the children, and she'll be worried about us by now anyway. Jack--"

"Yeah?" Jack looked rather nervous, as though expecting to be berated once again for his rather erratic assistance during the fight. Lex merely smiled at him faintly.

"Good work. Now turn off that jammer and start clearing this place up. If we survive whatever fight is coming, we'll be wanting somewhere to live. Luke?"

"What?" The other boy looked faintly unsure of himself. There was another showdown approaching, and this time it was one that would concern the Guardian. Somehow he didn't trust himself where his former commander was concerned. The Guardian had a power over him that he couldn't explain.

"With us or with Jack?" asked Lex. It was a simple enough question. Luke didn't answer it straight away though. Should he go with them, and see about confronting the Guardian? Perhaps for the last time? Or should he stay here, and help to fix the place he had helped to all but destroy? He shook his head in the end.

"I don't know. I liked believing that the Guardian was dead before."

"He soon will be," seethed Racha. Luke smiled faintly, though not with any real pleasure.

"Perhaps. Or perhaps he'll escape again. I don't want him to take me with him the next time, that's for sure. I think I'll stay here. But thanks for the offer, Lex. If you don't think you need me, I'll stay and help clean up. Makes sense not to leave the place too empty."

"True." Lex nodded, his mind already turning to new concerns and, sure that things were beginning to move once again, Bray left on his own designated mission. He was suddenly anxious to be sure that Trudy was okay.

"Hello?" The door was barricaded, and he couldn't move it an inch. "Trude? Is everything okay in there?"

"Bray?" There was a moment's inactivity, as of somebody struggling with obstacles, barriers, blockages - then suddenly the door was flung open. Small children spilled out of the room around his feet - three, four, five year olds, all overly decorated with absurd amounts of face paint. Seven, eight, nine year olds, looking as though they would like to join in with whatever fighting might still be going on. And behind them, Brady clutched in her arms, was Trudy. She was staring at Bray with wild hope in her eyes.

"It is over?" she asked him, rather wondering if perhaps they hadn't lost, and he was just coming to bring her the bad news. He grinned lopsidedly, suddenly feeling awkward in her company.

"Yeah." He shrugged. "Well, this bit is. We're going on to the hotel."

"You're what?" She looked horrified, the hope draining from her eyes to be replaced with nothing but despair. "Bray - the hotel?"

"We made a deal. Sort of. And anyway, we've got to go sometime. Lex thinks the other kids will come with us now that the children are safe. He says he's got weapons for everybody, and we've got a few of the Furies with us. Lex, Ebony and Ryan are worth several men each, you know that." He shrugged again, feeling increasingly awkward without understanding why. "I think we'll do okay."

"I wish I shared your confidence." She held out the baby. "Like to say goodbye to your niece before you leave? There's a good chance you won't be coming back."

"She won't remember me if I don't." He took the baby anyway, feeling strange holding her, with the thoughts of his own son. She frowned then.

"Where is Amber? Will she be going with you to the hotel?"

"She's already there." He shrugged, trying to make light of something that seemed to be burning up his insides with greater ferocity every moment. "She's joined them there. Sort of. She lured me and the others into a trap. Sold us out to the Chosen. She did it for her baby - our baby - but either way, I don't think she--" He shrugged. "Oh, who the hell knows." He looked down at the baby in his arms - a baby that wasn't even his, but which he knew so much better than his own. It was far easier to think that he was fighting for Brady's sake than for Eden's. Brady was a continuation of Martin. She was a part of somebody he had cared for for most of his life. Eden was a stranger who had torn Amber away. He looked up, and for a second Trudy saw what seemed to be tears sparkling in the corners of his eyes. She leaned over and gave him a hug. It was chaste enough, but it felt illicit somehow. He smiled.

"I'll see you soon, Trude."

"You'd better. I can't manage without you, Bray. Brady and I need you - and whatever happens with Amber, I want you to know that that'll always be true. Understand?"

"Yeah." He smiled, a little less awkwardly this time. Good old Trudy. Always there. Always where he needed her to be. Feeling a burst of an ages-old affection, he handed the child back, and found it to be quite a wrench. Maybe it was his own child he wanted to be with, and that was why Brady felt so pleasant in his arms. He had never thought of himself as much of one for children in the past, but he knew that it wasn't just because of Amber that the thought of Sasha made jealousy curdle his thoughts. His smile fluttered back out for a tentative encore. "I'm glad you're okay, Trude. Both of you. I know I... well, I don't say that sort of thing often enough, do I."

"Bray, if you keep talking like that, I'm going to start thinking that you're not planning on coming back." She squeezed his hand. "Go. Just make sure that you survive. Agreed?"

"Agreed." His eyes lingered upon the baby, and he couldn't help thinking, once again, about Eden. Did Eden look anything like Brady? Were there signs of Martin in his eyes too? Would Bray see his own mother or father in the hair or the face, or the smile when it eventually came? He hoped that he got the chance to find out. It was with slow feet that he made his way back to the lobby.

"Everything okay?" asked Ebony. The children were scampering around the place like the maddened hordes of hell unleashed for a few hours' merrymaking, and it was hard, momentarily, to be heard. He frowned at her.

"What?"

"I said, is everything okay?" She came to stand beside him, and reached out to wipe at something on his face. Paint. It wasn't his own. Had Trudy kissed him? He didn't remember. Perhaps one of the children had, as they had made their tumultuous escape from the playroom. Either way he didn't understand the guarded look in Ebony's eyes at the sight of it. He shrugged.

"Everything's fine. Brady is fine. I guess the Chosen didn't have a chance to do anything. They didn't take her away." It was amazing what a weight off his mind that had been. The idea of the Chosen having control of his brother's daughter was one that made his mind rage just as much as the thought of them having Amber and Eden. He struggled to smile. "I take it we're off again now?"

"Lex has gone to see who he can find. He'll be lucky though - it's still mad out there. You can hear gunshots if you listen."

"Yeah. We'll have a job getting to the hotel."

"Not if there's enough people with us. It's not that far to go." She took his hand, and felt it stiffen in her own. "Bray?"

"What?"

"What if she's not there? What if neither of them are?"

"Then I'll keep looking until I find them.Wherever they've gone." It was a certainty; something that he knew he would have to do. If nothing else he had to tell Amber that he didn't really blame her for what she had done; and he had to hold his son, even if it was only once.

"I'll come with you," she offered, and he was sure that she meant it. He smiled.

"You, me and Trudy? I couldn't leave her and Brady behind. Not if I have to be away for a long time. I'm not losing them again."

"You, me and Trudy." She didn't sound at all pleased about that. If he had been the type to realise the interest paid in him by others, he would have heard the jealousy in her words. Instead he merely smiled, and disengaged his hand from hers.

"Just like old times, hey. The school dances, when the pair of you couldn't choose between the pair of us. Made Martin mad." He flinched then, when he realised what he had said. Martin had, after all, gone quite, quite mad. "Anyway, that's only what happens if they've gone. We've got to worry about the hotel itself first. We should join the others outside. See what kind of an army we're going to get."

"It'll never be a big enough one. It never could be."

"Scared?" He couldn't help but smile at her. She smiled right back.

"Nothing scares me, Bray."

"I wish I could say the same. Come on. Racha will be agitating."

"He fancies you, you know." She was grinning when she said it; a little bit of teasing, of the kind that had been absent for too long. Bray just frowned. As ever he was oblivious to such things.

"Then he must be crazy."

"When he could have me, you mean?" She couldn't help it; flirting and games were second nature to her. Bray just smiled.

"Yeah. I suppose." He took her hand, almost without thinking, and made her confused all over again. "Come on. We'll have to collect the rest of those weapons before we can get started." And going to the place where he had met Danni would in no way complicate matters further still.

Chapter Text

When they set out, there were more of them than they had thought there would be. Maybe it was the anger at the return of the Chosen; maybe it was just the frustration - the people of the city wanting a chance to get rid of both the sets of invaders. Perhaps it was the guns, for there was certainly no shortage of them. Even some of the Fury soldiers they met on the way joined in with the marching army. It was the sight of Racha, no doubt, striding confidently at the head of the crowd, his rifle resting on his shoulder, his back textbook straight; one of their own, leading the colourful hordes on to their objective. He greeted them all with a nod or a salute, depending on how they first greeted him, and welcomed each one by name. The assorted Mall Rats didn't trust a single one of them, for if they were joining up it was only because of their dissatisfaction with the Chosen alliance; and there was no way of knowing what intentions they might have once the Guardian was gone. It boosted the numbers though, and that at least had to be worth something. An air of tension grew in the column though, as they went onward; a degree of separation between the Independents and the Furies, as well as amongst the Independents themselves. Old grievances, old agitations, rising to the surface in their nervousness. Lex began to wonder if they wouldn't just start shooting each other, long before they actually reached the hotel. And it wasn't even that long a walk.

The hotel itself was surrounded by guards; Furies wearing blue armbands to denote their new loyalty to the Chosen; Chosen acolytes in their blue robes; boys and girls with guns who all turned to face the marching band of intruders. There had been some small exchange of gunfire on the way, but nothing of note. Most of those who had been patrolling the streets had fled at the sight of the army, no doubt hoping to regroup later and make a more proficient assault then. Lex was beginning to worry that it might all turn out to be an anticlimax - until he saw the ranks arranged outside the hotel, and knew that it would be no such thing. Yelling his joy at the chance of another fight, even though he had been wanting a rest just a short time ago, he led his Independents into battle. Only the Fury contingent of the rebel force remained aloof, and with them Bray, Ebony and Tai-San.

"Not fighting?" asked Racha, without looking at anybody in particular as he spoke. Bray answered, for he had become used to all of Racha's words being directed at him.

"No gun," he pointed out. The same was true of Tai-San, but he knew that that was not the reason why she had not followed Lex. She had an interest in the fate of the Guardian, and she suspected that Racha intended to bypass the obstacle of all the guards, and find some way to get into the building. It was what Bray suspected himself, and something of which he planned to make use. He wanted to get inside too; not for Silver or for the Guardian, but for Amber.

"You never carry a gun." Racha's eyes were warm but his words were cold. "Never any use in a fight, Bray. Remember how I wanted you to join me? You were going to get me an army, to fight Silver."

"I did. We did."

"I know. And now you're going to help me to save him." He reached out, almost lazily, and gripped Bray's arm. "You know a way in there? One that'll get us past that lot? I don't want to waste time on a fight that could last all day. We're here. I want in there. Now."

"There's a way." It was Ebony who spoke up, thinking back to the day, seemingly such a long, long time distant, when she had first seen the parachutes raining down from the sky, and had taken her leave of the hotel in order to protect her own life. As far as she knew all of her people had died when the Furies had taken the hotel - all the Mozzies, who had been her bodyguard; all her glory-seeking retinue. She didn't feel especially sorry for them, but she did feel oddly guilty at the thought of her own self-serving escape.

"If you mean the way in through the cellar, it's been closed off," Racha told her. She shook her head.

"Not there. Another one, that leads into the garden out back. Just follow me." She took them quickly, worried that somebody might have found it, even though she didn't really believe that they could. There were sure to be guards there either way, for the back wall of the hotel garden was a part of the perimeter. There were guards - but Archer and a few of his men dealt with them silently, almost before Ebony had really registered their presence. She wondered if they were still alive, but decided in the end not to check.

"And this gets us into the hotel?" For a man who had once been all about games, Racha seemed very single-minded now. She nodded, not bothering to speak. It got them into the garden, anyway - and after that to the obstacle of who knew how many guards. Stepping back out of the way, she watched as they forced through into the garden, one after the other - Racha, Archer, Haines, McKendrick - people she had lived with, and total strangers she didn't trust for a minute. Bray hung back with her, watching everything with his usual dark scrutiny, and Tai-San hovered like an uncertain butterfly, clearly feeling that she should be hurrying in, governed by her odd desire to reach the Guardian before some vengeful Fury. Nobody understood her feelings for him, herself included. It was just one of those oddities that seemed so much a part of all their relationships.

"It's all gone quiet," pointed out Ebony, when they had stood listening to the gunfire in the garden for what seemed like forever. Bray nodded.

"Not all," pointed out Tai-San. The battle still seemed to be raging around the front of the hotel, and there was indecision in her eyes. Lex might be dying, for all she knew, and she had left his side for the Guardian. The guilt of that wasn't easy to shake.

"No, not all." Bray was also worried for Lex - and KC, and Chloe, and Pride, and Ryan. And who knew who else. He sighed. "Come on. We didn't come here to hide outside."

"No, but we were planning not to get shot." Ebony sighed at his persistence, but followed him into the garden quickly enough. It was strange to be back in such a familiar place, and she didn't stop to consider it. Didn't stop to look at the pool, the patio, the trees and the overgrown flowerbeds. A place she had known intimately for a long time now. Bray looked around once, though only once. Tai-San just hurried on through it all.

"Bray." Racha was standing just inside the back door. A few bodies lay about, but whether they were dead or just unconscious was hard to say. Given that they all wore identical uniforms, it wasn't even possible to say which side they had been on. Racha didn't seem too concerned.

"They've gone to secure the building," he said, apparently referring to his people. Even Archer had left his side, hurrying off no doubt in the never-ending search for more people to cheerfully kill. Not that he ever really did anything cheerfully. "I was just on my way downstairs."

"I have to find Amber." Bray didn't have a clue where to start looking, and Racha and Ebony both reached to stop him in the same moment.

"Let them finish fighting it out first," suggested Ebony. It would be insane to start walking the corridors and stairwells now. Bray hesitated, for he had no desire to be separated from Amber for any longer than strictly necessary - but he saw that she was right. He nodded.

"I suppose she'll be okay."

"Amber isn't stupid, Bray." Tai-San sounded as distracted as did he. "She'll keep her head down."

"I know." He also knew that that was no reason to assume she would be safe, or that somebody wouldn't shoot her anyway - but he knew that he wouldn't get anything accomplished whilst he stood around in doorways contemplating bodies, and talking to Racha. He nodded. "Alright. Silver first. Where is he likely to be?"

"In his battle room. One of the guards told me." Racha stared contemptuously down at one of the sprawled bodies. "It's down in the cellar. Apparently he hasn't left there in weeks. The guards hear him talking to himself sometimes, but he's not been seen by anybody except the Guardian." He scowled, looking decidedly unhappy with the situation. "I don't like it. Something's wrong."

"Everything is wrong." Tai-San had somehow moved into the lead, her light, cat-footed tread making no sound. "Enemies work together, friends fight in the streets, well ordered troops embrace chaos just because the Guardian rears his head again. Everything is in a state of imbalance, and there can be no peace until the balance is restored."

"If you say so." Ebony had never quite understood Tai-San's view of the universe, although the idea of there being a madness in everything just now was one that could hardly be denied. Racha pushed past.

"I don't care about imbalance," he said loudly. As if to underline his words, a louder, closer volley of gunfire rang out. Somewhere within it, Bray thought that he heard a tank. He prayed that it was in the hands of his friends, although it seemed unlikely. If the enemy had brought out their heavy artillery, this might all be over in a few minutes.

"You don't have to care. Just to see." Tai-San didn't challenge his right to lead the group, but she did frown at his back. Racha was a part of the imbalance, and she could sense it within him. He was a part of all that was wrong in the city at the moment; a cause of friction and unrest.

"Speak to yourself, Tai-San." Ebony also overtook the girl. Tai-San didn't care. She was used to people laughing at her ideas, her world view. Even Lex did so, and he was her husband and best friend. She reached out a hand to still Bray though, before he could follow the others on past.

"The signs are unmistakable, Bray," she told him. "The tensions are everywhere, like waves in the air. I can feel them. You can too, if you try to."

"I... don't especially want to." He frowned down at her. "Tai-San, you don't need to be connected to the spirit of the world to know that things are crazy right now."

"Not just crazy. Imbalanced. People do strange things when the balance is wrong. Up and down, left and right - all becomes confused. The universe seeks to straighten itself, and we all get caught up in its struggles. This can't be good, Bray. I don't think Racha will find what he wants to find."

"Just so long as I do." He quickened his pace then, hurrying past her after the others. Tai-San followed on, but her own tread was slower now. She doubted that Bray was going to find what he wanted, either. The vibes that she was sensing spoke of nothing but further unrest for all of them.

There were two guards outside Silver's war room. They looked up at Racha's approach, clearly surprised to see him. Like most of those lower ranking Furies who had remained loyal, they had believed the story they had been told of his brainwashing, and were not expecting to see him in the hotel again. He smiled curtly, and nodded at their swift jump to attention.

"I need to see the Lord General," he announced, his voice razor-sharp with authority. He carried that authority well, for the military was still a part of him, no matter his turning his back on it. The guards exchanged an uncomfortable glance.

"I'm sorry, Brigadier," apologised one, a ramrod straight boy of about fifteen. "We have strict orders. Nobody goes in to see him. Not even the company colonels. Only the Guardian goes in there."

"If he'll see the Guardian, he'll see me." Racha's eyes were hot and cold, and inspired obvious fear in the two boys. They exchanged another uncomfortable glance. "Well?"

"I'm sorry sir." The second boy was less ramrod straight; less by the book. "When the Lord General says that he doesn't want to be disturbed--"

"He'll see me." Racha strode up to the door with real purpose, but the boys both stepped up to intercept him. He clearly didn't care, and stiff-arming the pair of them he tried to open the door. Both boys drew their guns.

"I don't think you want to do that." Ebony had already raised her own weapon, and it was pointing leisurely at the pair. Racha paid no more attention to any of them, and seeming not to care whether or not the boys were going to fire at him, he gave the door handle an experimental twist. It turned easily; there would be no need to lock a door once the order was given not to disturb the room's occupant. He wondered who brought Silver his meals, or if the Guardian did that too now, and his body seemed to stiffen with ill-suppressed rage.

"Lord General?" He entered the room as a soldier, but by the time he had moved away from the door he was nothing more than a friend coming in search of a friend. "Silver? Are you here? Robbie?"

"He's not here." It was Bray's voice. The sometime leader of the Mall Rats was standing behind him in the doorway, looking about at the room. He saw maps and model soldiers; books and books and more books, all covered with dust as though unused for some time. Clearly there was nobody in the room at all - he hadn't really expected to find everybody here, but it would have been nice to have found somebody.

"No." Racha wasn't sure what to think. Silver would never abandon his war room when there was still a fight to be fought. He took such things very seriously, for wars were what made soldiers, and turned leaders great. "It doesn't look as though anybody has done anything much in here for ages."

"There's quite a set up though." Advancing into the room, Bray looked about. The maps, set with tiny models showing the progress of the fighting; radios, to put the room's occupant in touch with his troops; a tape-recorder, arranged on a table, its speakers facing the door. Bray toyed with the tape, rewinding it a little way, then turning it on. Static gabbled at him for a moment, then from out of the speakers came a powerful, authoritative voice.

"Colonel Orange, head west. Go as far as the clock tower and set up a base." Bray almost jumped at the unexpected sound, and he clicked the stop button with a frown. His eyes met with Racha's.

"That's Silver's voice." Racha prowled around the tables, coming closer to the tape-recorder, and listened to a little more of the recording. "But why... unless somebody wanted the guards outside to think that he was still in here?"

"Seems likely." Bray looked around the room again. There were signs of a struggle, now that he thought about it. A couple of chairs had been knocked over. At first he had thought it mere untidyness, but now that he had heard the tape, and Racha had suggested a sinister motive for it, nothing else seemed normal anymore. "What do you think happened?"

"Silver's strong. He'd put up a good fight."

"The Guardian is strong, too. And big."

"And the guards presumably didn't hear anything." Racha toyed with the tape-recorder again, glancing up as the door moved to admit Tai-San. She looked disinterestedly about the room, until her eyes alighted upon Bray.

"I suppose you're going to say there's imbalance here," muttered Racha. She eyed him haughtily, then glanced away.

"Not here. There's nothing here. Nothing at all. Usually a room carries imprints of the people who use it, but this room is empty."

"Emptier." Racha began to prowl around the place, kicking at tables and chairs, punching cupboards and surfaces. Little model soldiers flew about, a chair fell over, a cupboard door swung open. For several moments his rage continued, and the furniture continued to bear the brunt of his anger - then all of a sudden he stopped to turn back to Bray. And his eyes came to rest upon the cupboard that had fallen open, and his face drained of all its colour.

"The bastard." For a second he stood there, as pale and as grey as dying smoke, then he turned on one heel and marched from the room. He walked so fast that he seemed to be gone straight away.

"Racha?" Bray started after him, but stopped before he reached the door. What had made the brigadier react that way? Tai-San had already gone to the open cupboard, and Bray joined her there. Suspicion told him what he would see when he looked in the door, but he looked anyway, and for a moment couldn't turn away. He wanted to though. He had no great desire to look upon the wizened and desiccated weeks-dead figure of Silver, Lord General of all Tribe Fury, crumpled up into a ball and stuffed in a cupboard.

"The Guardian." Who else would kill somebody, and make it look as if he was still alive? Who else would use an imaginary alliance to consolidate his control over an army? It had to be the Guardian. Shaking his head, feeling all the more hatred for the leader of the Chosen, Bray turned on his heel and ran.

"What's going on?" asked Ebony at the door. He stared at her for a moment, then turned sharply to the two guards. "Go in there," he told them. "Look at what's in there. You'll have to see that only the Guardian can be responsible. Tell that to your people. Show them. You don't want to continue this alliance any longer."

"What?" Not caring much for the word of somebody not in uniform, the two guards showed no particular desire to comply. After a moment though, curiosity led them inside the room. Ebony watched them go.

"Silver dead?" she asked, with a predictable lack of concern. Bray nodded.

"We should go after Racha."

"Might as well do something. Sounds like the battle is easing up for a bit, anyway. It'll be slow until the reinforcements start arriving from all over."

"Good. Then I maybe I can find Amber." He was running away almost as soon as he had finished speaking, and after a moment to roll her eyes heavenward, she dashed off after. Tai-San followed more slowly, for she had a heavy heart to carry, as well as other burdens. She had hoped to save the Guardian for reasons that she didn't understand, but now she knew that he had sealed his own fate. He would die by Racha's hand now, or Racha would die by his. It was unavoidable. Either way, she knew that the Chosen's dangerous leader was beyond her. In many ways it was probably for the best.

Outside, the guns were still firing, but there was a change in the current of it all. Racha was striding through the fighting as though he believed himself to be bullet-proof, yelling at all who would listen that the Guardian had killed Silver, and that the Chosen were no longer the allies of Tribe Fury. The change that came upon the troops was astounding, even though Racha was supposed to be one of the enemy. His former colleagues didn't seem to doubt him for a moment, as though many of them had had their suspicions for some time, and the testimony of Silver's guards from the war room was all the extra proof they needed. Everywhere the young soldiers were tugging off their blue armbands, and turning on their former comrades-in-arms. The blue robes of the Chosen were falling, the tanks were turning away; and in the middle of it all stood Racha, like a man broken, or a little boy lost. Bray was starting towards him when he saw a group of unarmed civilians being held at gunpoint by the hotel wall, and came to a dead stop. There was a blonde girl. A blonde girl and a red-headed boy, and they were both gesturing to him. He hesitated, torn despite all his wishes to see Amber again; then with a relieved grin, he broke into a run.

"Amber!" He wanted to hug her, but wasn't sure that it would be appropriate. "Amber, I--" He broke off. "Where's the baby?"

"The Guardian." She looked as though she wanted to hug him too, but didn't. "Bray... the Guardian took him. He left... I don't know where he went, but he left before any of this started. He was talking about 'phase four'. I think that's what he said; he kept repeating it. Bray..."

"It's okay. It'll be... it'll be okay." He looked over to Ebony, to Racha, to the people still fighting. "Amber... I'm sorry. I should have come back here with you. It's my fault."

"No." Sasha looked awkward. "I think he was planning this anyway." He put an arm around Amber, clearly seeing that she needed support. She leaned against him, but her eyes were upon Bray. "Phase four. It's obviously part of some plan. Taking over the city? Winning support?"

"I don't know." Bray shook his head, all his emotions mixed up now. Amber and Sasha clinging together, and him not sure whether or not he even cared; the Guardian with his son; the fighting everywhere; guns still blasting the air around him. "But we'll find out. We'll get the baby back, Amber."

"Bray!" Racha's voice carried beautifully above the gunfire, and Bray turned to look towards him automatically. "The Guardian was seen heading south. I'm going after him." There was nothing but poison now in those once warm eyes, but Bray barely noticed. He just nodded, and looked back to Amber and Sasha.

"You see? Are you coming?"

"I can't." Amber couldn't meet his eyes, but he thought that he understood. If there was any chance that something might happen to Eden, she couldn't bear to be there to see it. Bray nodded, and looked towards Sasha.

"Look after her," he said, though his voice nearly caught in his throat. Sasha nodded, very slowly, and very slowly Amber sagged against him. Bray didn't stick around to look at any more.

"Bray!" Chasing after him was Ebony, as always. His ally when everything else was blown to hell. He nodded at her, but didn't speak. "You're going after the Guardian?"

"With Racha."

"And with me." She shouldered her rifle. "And don't try to say otherwise."

"I wouldn't." He didn't look at her, for his eyes were fixed upon inward sights, such as the days when it had been his arms that Amber had sunk into. "I'm glad to have you along."

"Just hurry up." Racha didn't care about their politics, their concerns, or anything else that might exist between the two of them, or between Bray and Amber. "He could have several hours on us. We'll have to move fast."

"There'll be Chosen in the streets," pointed out Bray. Racha's eyes were cold.

"Then there's be Chosen dying in the streets," he said without emotion. "Come on. If you're coming."

"I'm coming." Bray didn't ask why his company was being sought; why Racha wanted him along. He was just anxious to go. Ryan called out to him as the threesome ran on past, but Bray didn't respond. Neither did he answer KC's call, or Chloe's. He didn't even hear them. After a moment, watching the hurrying trio with interest, Lex and Pride broke away from the fighting and followed on after. Neither knew where they were going or why, but they could see that something important was happening, and they knew that they could be of use. Even Pride's confused loyalties didn't slow his response. Bray didn't notice their presence, but Ebony did, and she was glad of it. Wherever they were going, she couldn't help but think that they would need back up. The streets felt crazy as she ran down them; there was an air of menace everywhere, and Tai-San's words came back to her then. Imbalance and unrest. Chaos. Chaos was Ebony's friend, but it didn't feel like it today. It felt dangerous; oppressive. It felt like an end was coming. An end that none of them could escape.

Chapter Text

They ran for perhaps an hour in all, sticking to the main road through sheer instinct, and knowing all the time that they could be heading the wrong way. Racha was like a man possessed, blind to everything save the simple act of putting one foot before the other. Every so often a teenager in one uniform or another snapped into view, but usually they disappeared again at the sight of five others, mostly armed, coming their way. Only a few stuck around; Furies, to hear the story of Silver's death, and go racing back to join in the fight at the hotel; and Chosen, to flee in terror, and usually in a hail of bullets. Bray didn't bother trying to intervene; he knew that it would do no good. He didn't think that Racha would shoot him for his interference, but he wasn't altogether sure that he wanted to risk it; and certainly not for the Chosen. Lex kept an eye open for stray Badlanders, but he didn't see any. Somehow he was sure that they had discovered the change in the tide of things, and had made themselves scarce. It seemed a shame; there were scores to be settled there, one way or another. It couldn't be helped now though; now there were other things to worry about.

A young Fury told them a garbled tale of having seen the Guardian heading back towards the Mall, but another denied having seen him. Bray wondered if he might be heading towards the rail yard, which of course had been the court of King Zoot. There was no sign of him there though; nothing save the rubble of the various refugees who had sheltered there recently. A hundred other places that might be of importance to the Chosen floated through Bray's mind then; the school where Martin had revealed his new look for the first time, when a good half of the adults had still been alive; the house where they had grown up together; the first headquarters of the Locos, when Bray had still been trying to be one of them. Most of those places no longer existed though; they had burnt down back in the early years, when the chaos had been at its height. So where else was there? Racha didn't wait for him to think - he ran on anyway. Past old shops, old offices, old warehouses. Past churches, temples and mosques. Past any number of buildings that might have held the Guardian, but showed no sign of it. Ebony was thinking too, but all that she could suggest were the places that seemed too far away; the house of the favourite aunt that Martin had so loved to visit; Trudy's house on the hillside; the skating rink where they had all liked to spend their weekends. If the Guardian had been running through the streets with a baby, it seemed likely that he wouldn't go too far. So where was he?

It was one of the Chosen who put them on the right track in the end; a drifting blue shadow spotted by Pride when the others were too focused on other things to notice. He grabbed the unfortunate acolyte, who turned out to be a girl of about twelve, and dragged her up to the others, now slowed to a jog just ahead of him. Racha's eyes spat sparks that did not speak of sanity, and this time Bray did intervene. He caught Racha by the arm, dragging him back, and was treated to a flash from those bright black eyes that was nothing like as friendly as usual.

"I'm not going to kill her," growled the brigadier, bringing his fury under control almost immediately. "Dead girls can't answer my questions." He tugged free then, and caught the girl by the front of her robe. "Where is he?"

"He?" The girl looked panic-stricken, and clung to the one thing that she understood. "Zoot? He hasn't returned to us. Not yet."

"He's not likely to." Hearing his brother's name used, again, by these people made Bray almost angry enough to take over the bullying from Racha, but he bit his lip and hung back. Racha glanced at him briefly.

"You think your god will return to you?" he asked. She lowered her head, her expression losing its panic in the face of new calm.

"We will see Zoot. The Guardian says that it will be. It's in the teachings. After the greatest chaos, the madness of a city torn by war, Zoot will be resurrected in the midst of greater chaos still."

"Greater chaos? What's greater than greatest?" Lex shook his head, dismissing the question as soon as he had asked it. "These people are nuts. They always have been. Forget her."

"No." Racha held up a hand for silence, then looked into the girl's quiet grey eyes. "This war; the one that heralds the coming of the greater chaos; we're in the middle of it now?"

"The Guardian believes so. He's gone to welcome it. He's gone to welcome Zoot. We're all going to meet him." She smiled, almost blissfully; a happy, devoted believer, ready to face her own truth. Racha rolled his eyes and pushed her away.

"She's crazy. We won't get anything worthwhile out of her."

"Maybe." Pride crouched down beside the fallen girl, looking into her enraptured eyes. She was past fear now - threatening her would do no good. Her own words had healed her of the terror she had shown when first captured. He smiled at her, as openly as he could manage.

"Zoot is coming back," he said quietly. She frowned.

"You're no believer."

"I don't need to be, to know what's coming. All this chaos - it has to be leading to something, doesn't it. I can see it. The Guardian has gone to welcome Zoot - but wouldn't you like to be there too?"

"To be there when Zoot arrives?" Her face flushed suddenly, and her eyes widened. "Would that be possible? I've not been a follower for long."

"Zoot would welcome you whoever you are, if he's truly your god. Wouldn't he?" Pride looked up at the others, and nodded towards Bray. "That's Zoot's brother. You recognise him don't you?"

"Yes. I think so." The girl frowned, then her expression cleared. "You mean you're going to welcome Zoot as well? This was all a test of my faith?"

"Yeah." Lex could see the shadows forming in Bray's eyes, and intervened before the other boy could say something they might have cause to regret. "And you passed with flying colours, right Bray?" There was no answer, and Pride smiled as gently as ever before.

"The brother of Zoot is a recent convert. You'll have heard of his stand against the Chosen, no doubt? Well now he's going to meet with his brother, and his emotions have got the better of him." Above the gentle smile, Pride's eyes glared furiously at Bray, who shifted restlessly, then forced a smile of his own.

"Yeah." His words as they came were like knife thrusts in his chest, but he forced himself to say them. "We're going to meet with Zoot, but we're lost. Perhaps we're not pure enough. If you could only point us in the right direction, you'll be doing a great service for Zoot."

"You'll be helping to deliver this group of sinners to him, for cleansing," suggesting Lex, wondering if perhaps that wasn't going a little too far. The girl seemed to be lapping it up though. She scrambled to her feet.

"It's this way," she announced, her enthusiasm practically overflowing. "The Guardian was going to the place where Zoot was first brought into the world; there to ignite the fires that will bring a chaos worthy of heralding Zoot's return." Her eyes were as wide and as bright as it was possible for them to be, her breathing in deep, staccato bursts. Religious mania, thought Pride, with a trace of disgust. Still, it had played its part for all of them. He straightened up.

"Where was Zoot born?" Racha turned to Bray, his own eyes so bright that they made those of the girl seem dull in comparison. Bray's head turned automatically to look over to the west. To the remains of the little hospital where he remembered being taken by his father to first welcome his young brother to the world. His family had moved house not long after, and he had never been back to that little building again. It had been abandoned, he seemed to remember hearing, in favour of a new maternity unit closer to the centre of the town. He pointed. Racha took off at a run.

"Say thanks why don't you." Lex went after him rather more slowly, the others alongside. Only Pride thought to look back at the girl, but she wasn't interested in him. He left her, and after a slow, hesitant moment she came after them, running at their heels like an unwanted younger sister tagging along.

The streets were empty now. Once or twice Lex thought that he heard somebody; saw something, lurking in out of the way places. Nobody seemed inclined to bother them though, and Ebony's ready gun soon drooped. Even she was willing to accept that there were no more immediate threats to their safety. Racha and Bray seemed oblivious even to the possible threats, running on with an increasing lead on the others. Bray was looking about more as he ran now, but not to scan for the occasional figures hiding in shadows. He was seeing things that triggered memories; the shop where they had stopped to choose his mother some flowers, before going to visit her and Martin in the hospital. The café where his father had taken him after the visit, to buy him a milkshake and ask what he thought of the new baby. Old memories, long forgotten, stirred to sudden wakefulness with a frown. It was not long before he saw the hospital as well; a clearly long abandoned building, several of the windows boarded up many years before. It had an air of dereliction about it that went far beyond the disused, vandalised buildings of the post-Virus days. Racha had come to a halt.

"He'll see us if he's near a window," he commented, his voice low and deep. Lex slowed to a halt beside him.

"Me and Pride will take the back," he offered, but nobody acknowledged the suggestion. "Maybe we can take him by surprise?"

"I just want him dead. Surprise or no." Apparently throwing aside his moment of concern at being spotted, Racha was beginning to advance again. Lex nodded to Pride, and together they headed off to look for a back entrance. Only Ebony seemed to notice them go.

"We have to be careful," she said, not entirely sure that she would be heard. "Don't forget he's got a baby with him."

"I don't care about some--" Racha broke off, his air of detachment breaking at last. "Oh. Bray's baby." He frowned then, looking back at the other boy. "It is your baby, isn't it?"

"For what it's worth." It felt increasingly like Sasha's, but he knew that that was only his irritation speaking. His jealousy. Besides - his, Sasha's or the Lord General Silver's, it was a baby and it had to be protected. Racha nodded.

"Where did the others go?"

"Round the back. To see if they can creep up on him." Ebony shouldered her rifle. "You want to blast in there with our guns blazing, or see about something a bit more subtle?"

"Don't want to shoot the baby." Racha looked somewhat unfocused. "It's a little Bray. Besides, there's no game in that. No challenge. No fun." He smiled suddenly, and for a moment was just as he had been before the Guardian had sprung up to interfere in his great game. "We should walk in openly. See what's going on. Let him see us. It doesn't matter."

"It might." Ebony stepped back to look up at the building. "How did he know this was where Zoot was born?"

"Maybe he found some records. Maybe he met somebody who knew? We're not the only ones who knew Zoot in the old days." Bray also looked up at the building, trying to remember which floor his mother and brother had been on. Not that it mattered - that much at least the Guardian couldn't have known. Racha shrugged.

"It's all irrelevant," he said firmly. He didn't care about speculation; he only cared about getting this done. Squaring his shoulders, a pistol now in each hand, he headed towards the once grand doors and stepped through their broken glass. Bray and Ebony followed on after him. He was right - the details didn't matter. Such things were just distractions, keeping them from their objective. Who cared how the Guardian had known where to come? What mattered was what exactly he thought was going to happen here.

They didn't have far to look. The Guardian was crouched in the lobby, bent over a large black box, and fiddling with something inside it. He glanced up at the approach of the three new arrivals, and turned to pick up some other object; one that squirmed and wriggled, and made peculiar noises. Tiny noises. Bray started forward with a strangled sound that came from the back of his throat.

"Stay where you are." The authority in the Guardian's voice made his disciples ready to do anything for him, but it had no effect on Bray. The fact that his enemy, rising to his feet with a grandiose flourish, held his son in his arms, though, made him ready to obey his every word. He froze. The Guardian smiled.

"I can't pretend that I expected you to come, but I'm rather glad that you did. It's fitting. You can be here when Zoot returns."

"Zoot isn't coming." Bray could see something behind the Guardian; the shapes, moving slowly and silently, of Lex and Pride. Inwardly he thanked the heavens that the pair had come along on this venture; few could move so well in such circumstances as could they. Keeping low, they glided across the age-dulled lobby floor, and slid into the cover of the reception desk. The Guardian laughed, and for a second the sound startled Bray - then he dragged his mind away from thoughts of Lex and Pride, and focused once again upon the Guardian. Beside him Racha was beginning to breathe heavily, barely concealing his desire to do something violent. The Guardian hardly seemed to notice him.

"Oh but Zoot is coming, Bray," he argued." It's written."

"By you."

"Yes. But written nonetheless. Zoot was born of chaos. He lived by chaos, he thrived on chaos. He'll return in chaos."

"Call that fight back at the hotel chaos?" Ebony shook her head. "I know Zoot's kind of chaos. I helped him to make it. And that isn't it."

"Fight back at the hotel?" The Guardian didn't seem to know what she meant. "I wouldn't rely on those people out there to make the kind of chaos I need. I'm talking of fire, panic, disaster, death. Zoot will come to us, or we will all go to Zoot." He gestured at the black box. "You see?"

"It's a bomb." Bray sounded almost emotionless. "You're going to blow the building up?"

"The building?" The Guardian laughed derisively. "What good would that do? One building? There are bombs all over the city. I've planned this intensively, from my taking of Eden and my capture of you - which you might have escaped, but I seem to have engineered anyway - to my taking control of the city. A thousand disciples waiting out there, pure now in their belief, and ready to meet Zoot. And you, and your child, here as the honour guard. I only wish I could have had Zoot's child here as well, but we'll make do with what we have. When the signal is sent, every bomb in the city will explode, and it'll create the greatest chaos of all."

"Provided you survive long enough to send your signal." Racha was starting forward now, and although Bray called out to stop him, fearing for Eden, the Fury carried on. The Guardian frowned at him, looking him up and down as though seeing him for the first time.

"And you are?" he asked. Racha smiled unpleasantly.

"Brigadier Racha, second in command of Tribe Fury, and most loyal friend of the Lord General Silver." There were several people present who might have queried the 'most loyal friend', given the rebellion, but unsurprisingly nobody mentioned it. "And you're talking out of your backside, 'Guardian'. A thousand disciples? When they found out what you did to Silver, all your Fury converts backed out, and killed most of the others. You're lucky if you have half a dozen supporters right now. That doesn't sound like a great welcome for Zoot. You don't have control of the city. You don't even have control of this building."

"You're lying." The Guardian's face took on a rough red hue from his rage. He took a step forward, and held the baby out as though as a threat. Bray's breath caught in his throat, and such was his focus upon the wriggling bundle that he almost failed to notice Lex and Pride, slipping out of the cover of the reception desk. They had heard everything - they must have done. He wondered if there was anything that they could do to the bomb, but the Guardian still seemed to be too close to it. They were moving so slowly, so quietly, checking the wires, the other debris that was strewn across the floor. He couldn't see what half of it was - with luck, they could. Racha seemed to have noticed them too; either that or he was so intent upon his own purpose that he was blind to everything else. He was doing a fine job of distracting the Guardian though, and Bray was glad of it. His own instincts had been thrown into confusion by his son lying in his enemy's mocking arms. It left him powerless, and unable to attack as he had wished to.

"Lying?!" Racha took a step towards the Guardian again, moving slowly, his posture as swaggering and as powerful as it had ever been. Bray couldn't see his face properly from his current angle, but he knew exactly how it would look; the bright black eyes, aglow with all the force they had, and a smile at once warm and lethal. They made a true pair, Racha and the Guardian, both with their flowing blond hair and their powerful charisma. Their confidence, their smiles, their determination. Bray had hated both of them, but there was only one of them that he wanted dead right at this moment; dead or defeated. He never wanted to be forced to look upon the face of the Guardian again, and see his manic eyes, or hear his hateful preaching.

"Lying." The Guardian's eyes had become narrow slits. Bray risked another glance at Lex and Pride, who seemed to be struggling with some kind of equipment. He didn't know what it was. Something to do with the bomb, he imagined. The massive network of bombs, if the Guardian's claims were true. He almost shuddered at the thought, and glanced over at Ebony. She was holding her gun levelled at the Guardian, and he knew that she was looking for a shot. She wasn't that good, though. None of them were, save perhaps for Tribe Fury; and the gun was an automatic, too. If she fired now she might hit the Guardian - but she would almost certainly take Eden, Lex and Pride out with him. She didn't lower the gun though; didn't stop looking for her opening. Bray wanted to drag the gun away from her and throw it back out of the doors, but he didn't. He didn't even move.

"Get on the radio, if you have one left." Racha didn't bother to hide his derision. "Your 'empire' has fallen. What's left of your supporters may have the guts to go to the hotel and help with the fight there. Most of them have probably long fled, or just forsaken your cause and joined with the others of the city. It's not your city anymore. I doubt it's Tribe Fury's, either, thanks to you."

"Then they'll all die." The Guardian shrugged dismissively. "Zoot was going to bring eternal life to his supporters. His true believers. But if they have forsaken him, they will die with the rest of you in my great fire." He looked down at Eden, then laid the baby on top of the big black box that stood beside him. Ebony's fingers tensed on her gun, but still she didn't fire. Racha was in the way now, moving about with a cat-like tread, sensing the possibility of a fight.

"If you want to blow up the city, that's your own look out. I don't plan to die that way, at least any time soon." He smiled with an impressive measure of ice. "You're going to die, but you're going to die by my hand, not by some bomb you've rigged up for your own amusement. Now step away from your toys and give me my chance at revenge."

"You? Some posing ninny I've never met before?" The Guardian shook his head, and his long blond hair tossed itself like a mane. "I rather think it's Bray who wants to kill me, isn't it Bray? You want to crush the life out of me? Shoot me, strangle me? It's all the same, and none of it matters. Zoot will bring me back to life soon enough. But you're too much the good guy even to give yourself that little pleasure, aren't you."

"Get away from my son, and we'll see who's too much of a good guy." Bray had no idea if he would be capable of killing the Guardian; he didn't think he would get the chance anyway, since the other youth was definitely the larger, and the stronger. He had an idea that Lex and Pride could accomplish their goal, however, and perhaps disconnect the bomb network altogether, if he could only be sure of distracting the Guardian long enough. They were closer to him than ever now, half crawling, half crouching, but clearly confused. Neither was an electrician, or a technician. They needed Jack. The Guardian laughed.

"You? You think you can fight me, Bray?" He bent to look at the baby again, quiet now, and staring up at the ceiling as though enjoying the view of dirty skylights and cracked plaster decorations. One tiny fist waved in the air, and Bray watched it, transfixed. This was crazy. He needed to get that child away from here now. He took a step forward.

"I'll fight you," he offered, without believing his own chances of success. The Guardian just laughed, and without so much as a pause for breath, drew a short black revolver from within his robe. He levelled it at Bray.

"I have a better idea," he said cheerfully. Racha moved towards him. This was not going the way he had planned. He wanted to rip the Guardian to pieces with his bare hands, not watch him make an escape with the aid of a gun. His intended target was backing away though, apparently happy to leave the baby behind, and it was Ebony who realised what he was intending. He wasn't trying to escape at all.

"The bomb!" The realisation made her eyes widen. "He's going to detonate it!"

"What?" Bray glanced over to the swathes of equipment that had been abandoned all over the place; the work of long days, clearly, for some technician at least as skilled as Jack. He had no idea how it might be operated, but the Guardian clearly did, and he was heading for some part of it. He turned slightly as he did so, the better to see what he was doing, and for the first time he spotted Lex and Pride. His face turned white with fury.

"What are you doing?!" He turned to them fully then, and Racha took advantage of the movement of the gun to swing up his own. He trusted his own aim, even if Ebony didn't trust hers. For Bray though, there could be no certainty with automatic gun fire when his son was so close by. He threw himself at Racha, knocking the gun aside so that it fired harmlessly into the reception desk. The Guardian swung to face them, firing once at the pair as they struggled together, though coming closer to hitting Ebony. He turned back then, raising the gun once again to point at Lex and Pride. Lex had stared death in the face many times since the collapse of the old world, but this time he felt little of the hope that had come to him in those other times. He couldn't think of anything to avoid the inevitable bullet.

"Guardian!" Bursting into the room in a great panic and fluster, the young girl Pride had captured and interrogated skidded to a halt on the grimy tiled floor. "Guardian!"

"What?" He turned about, reacting instinctively though not without suspicion. The sound of her voice carried the rapture of one of his true believers, and a part of him welcomed the chance of an ally, but he was angry at the appearance of anybody just at this moment. The girl was still running towards him though, past Ebony, who tried to stop her, past Bray, sprawled now on the ground where Racha had thrown him.

"Guardian, am I too late? Is Zoot back?" Her eyes were everywhere, looking at everything, seeing nothing, focused entirely upon her spiritual leader. "Guardian?"

"Shut up and get away from me." He was trying to turn back to Lex and Pride, but they had both skidded back out the line of fire, and he was left with nothing but an expanse of floor. He swore, and turned back to the girl in a rage. "See what you did? Enemies of Zoot, escaped because of you!"

"But Guardian." She fell to her knees at his feet. "I came for Zoot. To help Zoot. The enemies of Zoot are nothing."

"Get away from me!" He kicked at her and she fell away, stumbling and crawling back in her confusion. Ebony took a moment to dash forward and grab her, though she surprised herself at the action. The Guardian fired off a shot in her general direction, but his aim was as bad the second time as the first. The bullet shattered what was left of the glass in the main door. Dragging the dead weight of the girl over to the wall, Ebony ducked down there, anxious to avoid the random bullets of a highly inexperienced gunman. She thought that she saw Pride and Lex moving in the corner of her eye, but when she turned to look at them, all that she could see was vague signalling. She had no idea what they were trying to tell her, though they were trying it frenetically enough.

"Your plans keep collapsing, don't they Guardian." Taking a few steps forward, completely unswayed by the gun in the Chosen leader's hand, Racha was grinning fiercely. "First you lose the city, now you lose your fine plans."

"I've lost nothing." The Guardian reached out, one hand caressing some other part of his sprawl of complicated equipment. "Zoot will still come, and with him his chaos."

"You'll explode in a ball of fire, you mean, and spend the rest of eternity looking like a fool." Racha's smile had grown into a lopsided sneer that showed an expanse of white teeth. Behind him Bray had struggled back to his feet, and was completely at a loss as to what to do now. Apparently Racha didn't care if the Guardian blew up the city; just as long as he was granted a second in which to see the other boy die, before his own life was snuffed out by the blast. Bray had other responsibilities though, even if Racha didn't.

"You're all crazy," he said now, heading towards the pair. His feet slipped on debris; bits of the bomb lash-up he thought, although he wasn't sure. "You talk like blowing up the city is a good thing."

"Maybe it is." Racha threw him a sidelong glance, his old, warm smile showing itself for just an instant, in honour of his favourite Mall Rat. "Hell of a send off for Silver. If he can't have this city, maybe nobody should."

"What?" Bray couldn't believe that even a Fury would think of something so insane, but Racha was looking away again now, his once warm eyes restored to the chilliness with which he regarded their proud enemy.

"Don't you agree, Bray?" was all that he would say on the issue. There was a smile in his voice, but it didn't show in his face. The Guardian stepped towards him, and planted the muzzle of his revolver squarely against Racha's forehead.

"It seems perhaps we're not so different," he suggested. "You honour your leader, I honour mine." His eyes flickered for the barest second towards Bray. "And we both hate that nauseating fool." Racha merely smiled, and the Guardian turned the gun to point at Bray.

"But Guardian!" Like an instrument of heaven the young girl intervened once again, dragging herself away from Ebony and running towards the little group. "Guardian no! He's one of us now, that's why I told him to come here."

"You what?" The gun wavered from its aim as though the Guardian was seriously considering shooting her instead, and that slight wobble was enough for Racha. He seized the strong, pale wrist, and twisted hard, sending the gun bouncing away across the floor. One hard, powerful fist, of which Bray could testify to the force, knocked the flamboyant, would-be leader of men to his knees. To Racha that seemed a nicely ironic position for someone who claimed to be religious. He smiled harshly.

"Get your son out of here." The words were clearly meant for Bray, though the eyes were still for the Guardian alone. Bray didn't move. "Damn it, do as I say!"

"Yeah." It was the only word that managed to tumble out of his mouth, and faintly transfixed by the sight of the humbled Guardian, Bray went over to pick up the baby. It was the first time he had held his son, and the wonder of the moment came to him even in the peculiar circumstances of the meeting. It was with an effort that he tore his eyes away and looked back to Racha.

"Go." His back as stiff as the soldier he had always trained to be, Racha strode over to the big black box and ripped a wire from it. "I think Lex and Pride destroyed the radio connection to the other bombs. I'm no specialist, but that's what the equipment they were fiddling with looked like to me." He glanced over to where Ebony was struggling with the young girl, who was clearly distraught by recent events. He didn't understand why Ebony was bothering, but it was immaterial anyway, to him. "Just leave. Whatever argument you have with him, it's mine now. He's mine. You know I can handle him better than you ever could."

"Yeah." It seemed to be the only thing he could say. He glanced back at his baby, then shot one last look at the Guardian. He was climbing back to his feet, but he still looked bested somehow. There was a cruel smile on his face, and his eyes lingered on the black box, and for a tiny, tiny second, Bray thought that he saw a gleam in those eyes that spoke out against the craven body language. His eyes snapped back to Racha.

"The bomb!" he shouted, running forward again, staring down at the black box in shock. "It was booby-trapped!"

"It was what?" Racha stared down at the box, and saw a flash of something inside it. A counter, ticking down to zero? A rough electrical lash-up sparking into life? It didn't matter. Pure instinct told him that Bray was right. His eyes hardened.

"Get out," he spat, his voice coloured by a tone more harsh than any he had ever used to Bray before.

"But the bomb! You have to come too!"

"I'll come. When I've dealt with him." Ignoring the cruel smile on the face of the Guardian, Racha took a step towards him. "I was right, wasn't I 'Guardian'. The other bombs won't go off when this one does?"

"Who knows." The Guardian no longer looked entirely sane - if, for that matter, he ever had done. "Who cares? Zoot will come. He will come."

"No he won't." Racha downed him again, with a punch as devastating as the first. "You were wrong, Guardian. We're nothing alike. The only thing we share is that both of our leaders are dead, and neither of them is ever coming back." He glanced back at Bray. "Still here?"

"The bomb, Racha."

"To hell with the bomb. I'll leave when I've done what I set out to do." Racha polished his knuckles on his jacket, then dragged the Guardian up a short way and punched him again. "Get that damn baby out of here!"

"Yes. Of course." He had almost forgotten the child, and he began to back away immediately, clumsily, over the uneven flooring. "Racha?"

"Yeah, I know. Thanks."

"I was going to say... good luck. And whatever you're planning to do, don't take too long."

"Sure." He looked up from his collapsing victim long enough to flash Bray his old, warm smile one final time. "Now get out. Or I'll bloody shoot you."

"I'm gone." He turned around then, running uncertainly to the door, and pausing only briefly to look back. He couldn't see much though, for Pride and Lex and Ebony were there, and they were pulling him away from the building. He tried to turn back; tried to see through the broken door. He couldn't see anything. Couldn't see Racha as he let go of the Guardian and stepped back, goading the other youth into standing, and fighting for real. Couldn't see either of them, converging upon each other in a bright-eyed, blond-haired tangle, unconscious of the dangers of the bomb. He let the others drag him away, oblivious to the young girl sheltering, terrified, nearby. Oblivious to the oddly covetous look Pride was giving Eden. Oblivious to Lex and Ebony's hurrying, guiding arms about his shoulders. He did see the baby though, and he let his eyes gaze upon it even in the midst of the hurrying and the hassling, and the stumbling over tumbled trash and debris. He looked into his son's eyes, and saw everything that he had been fighting for since the day he had been forced to leave Amber up in the hills. And he smiled, adrift in wonder. He was still smiling, still lost in the moment, when behind him the hospital blew itself to smithereens.

They never found out what happened to the Chosen. Perhaps they were all dead; killed by Tribe Fury, or by the people of the city. Lex didn't much care either way, although he was hoping that somewhere out there the Badlanders still lived; that one day there would be a chance to avenge himself on that score at least. Tribe Fury themselves had cleared out. They had been left with no leader, for Archer couldn't count on the support of anybody beyond Racha's little breakaway group, and the colour-coded colonels all seemed to be dead. The soldiers had gone, anyway; perhaps to lick their wounds, perhaps to regroup. They might one day return, and the Mall Rats knew that all too well; but again Lex didn't much care. They had gone for now, and that was the main thing.

And what chaos was left in their wake. When the fighting had at last died down, the city's inhabitants; the ones who hadn't been a part of the fighting; had crept from their hiding places. The young ones, the weak ones, the sick ones, or just the ones who hadn't wanted to fight. They had joined up with their fellow city-dwellers, and begun the long job of shoring up the damaged buildings, repairing roofs where they could, and clearing out the dead bodies as they had once cleared out the bodies of their elders, in the days following the Virus. It was an uneasy truce though, and as he walked amongst the labour gangs, acting in his favoured capacity as peacekeeper, Lex saw that - but again he didn't much care. The peace that had existed under the rule of the Mall Rats, and under Ebony's brief tenure as queen of the city, had been torn apart. It might return; but first would come another time of unrest, street-fighting and chaos. It was unavoidable. It seemed to be the way that the city worked. But again Lex didn't care. That was the environment in which he thrived; and besides, he had other things to think about. New concerns.

Tai-San had been acting erratically for some time now; he had noticed it, although he knew that she didn't think he had. Her senses were off. She had worried over the Guardian, when once she would have been fatalistic about his fate. She had been tired at odd moments. She knew why it was, he was sure - and so did he. Even warriors could be sensitive sometimes; even the great Lex could see what was in her eyes. It made him happy. Soon enough, he knew, his tribe would be a little bigger, and he would know at last what he had missed when Zandra had died. It was a secret for now; Tai-San clearly didn't want to tell anybody, and he was man enough to let her have that. Things would reveal themselves eventually, after all. All secrets do, in time.

And so came the new age of the city; the age of confusion returned, and chaos once again in the streets. The Locos, as ever reborn from the ashes, and other tribes splitting and merging to face the new dangers with greater strength. It hardly seemed a great victory; to have fought against death and won only danger; but at least it was a danger that they knew. There would at least be no more massacres, no more tanks, no cruelty beyond the harsh law of the streets; the law of the urban jungle. The unrest outside reflected itself upon the Mall Rats though, and translated itself into confusions and unrest inside. They were together again, for the first time in a long while. With Ryan and Salene returned, the Mall was a more cheerful place than before. There was always the promise that Patsy might return, once she had found out if her brother truly was alive - but all was not as it had been. All was not as it once was. Dal was gone, and would never be returning, and the sadness of that came upon all of them, from time to time. He wasn't there to act as doctor, for those amongst them injured in the fighting. He wasn't there to come running down the stairs, with his ever-cheerful smile. And other things were different too.

Sasha seemed set to stay. Nobody quite knew what was going on between him and Amber, or between Amber and Bray - or, for that matter, between Bray and Ebony, or Trudy. Bray spent more time with Trudy now, watching Brady play, and waiting for the day when Eden could play with her. There was a strange atmosphere between him and Amber though, and he had gone back to his old ways, of disappearing out into the maddened streets to look for food, and leaving Trudy and Amber both fretting over his safety. Ebony went out as well from time to time, usually alone, flirting with the idea of returning to the Locos, although they were hardly the gang they had once been. Something kept her at the Mall though; the same thing, perhaps, that kept Pride there, even though he had always said that he would leave when the fighting was over. He still spoke of leaving, but he never seemed to get around to it. He helped to repair the Mall, he played his flute with Sasha in the evenings, he taught Chloe what he knew of medicines, for she had set her heart upon following in Dal's footsteps. She had seen enough fighting to last her a lifetime. But still he talked of leaving, and when he did there was a certain gleam in Sasha's eyes too; and, perhaps, in Amber's. She had loved the outdoors life as well. Yet none of them seemed ready to make their move. They were bound together in any number of intricate ways. Life was complex for all of them, for everything, it seemed, had changed; everything and nothing; everything and everything else. That was the pattern of life in the city.

Of Racha they found no sign, just as they found no sign of the Guardian. Bray gave a simple service for his captor, tormentor and friend at the water's edge, where he had once sent Martin out to sea on a burning boat; but he liked to think that the crazy soldier had escaped from the building before it blew up. It was just a fleeting fancy, but a part of him had grown fond of the blond boy, with his warm black eyes and his insane dreams of eternal fighting. Perhaps he lived still; perhaps he had died. It didn't matter, for either way his days were over. The city had moved on. The terror had changed its face, its name, its nature, and turned to new threats and ferocities. Such was the way of things, and always would be. Such was life - and death - and would be so, until the world grew old again.