“Close one,” he muttered, dusting himself off.
“No kidding,” Taka replied.
“But now we’re really in the shit. We didn’t plan for a double trial.”
“So now what?”
“I don’t know,” Addison groaned.
Looking out at the institute, he cursed his own arrogance. It had been stupid to assume they could out-think the levellers. There was no way to beat them, no way to extricate themselves from this nightmare, no way to...
A voice interrupted his thoughts.
“What is all this?”
Thibault, their new Belgian returnee, was sticking his head out of his cellsuite. He was pale, wide-eyed, and Addison realised he’d witnessed the whole altercation. It was probably the first time the man had seen the levellers (and their drone) in action.
Reality was sinking in.
“Mr. Peeters,” Taka began. “We need to talk.”
Before he could reply, a smaller voice chimed in.
“They really are putting us on trial, aren’t they?”
It was Hannah, woken by the commotion. She stood in her doorway, arms folded, but as Addison stared he noticed something different. There was an energy about the girl, something that hadn’t been there yesterday. Her eyes were clearer, her jaw more solidly set; determination and dignity etched into in her posture where before there had only been denial. Sometime in the night she had come back to herself.
“We’re going to stop them,” Taka said, turning to her. “We’re going to save you.”
“Are you now?” Hannah replied, eyeing each of them in turn. “Three big strong men, going to save the young damsel all by your big strong selves?”
They all stared at her in astonishment.
Hannah’s nostrils flared. “Were you even going to ask for my opinion?”
Taka looked pained, but Addison suddenly broke out into a grin.
“Am I amusing you?” the girl asked.
He wasn’t amused, he was impressed. Hannah’s anger was something he could use. He’d thought her meek, timid, but this display of spirit meant she was something much better: reinforcements. Suddenly he saw it: four returnees, four levellers, a level playing field. The plan could still work. In fact, with a bit of modification it might work even better, save all four without anyone sacrificing themselves. They just needed to work together.
“Enough,” Addison said, clapping his hands. “There’s going to be a trial, but it won’t go how they want.”
He turned to Hannah.
“Look, we don’t know each other very well,” he began. “But I need you to trust me. Those people, they want to kill you. Badly. We aren’t anyone’s idea of knights in shining armour, but we’re what you’ve got. And we want to help. And to do that, we need your help. So will you help us Hannah?”
The girl stood, hands on her hips, then she nodded slowly. Addison smiled, then turned to Thibault.
“Now tell me, Mr. Peeters,” he said. “Have you ever been tasered?”
* * *
The double doors loomed high above them.
“Ready?” Addison whispered.
“Not really,” Taka replied. “Can’t believe we’re here.”
“You’re meant to be the confident one.”
“Maybe I’m bricking it at the final hurdle.”
“Mixing your metaphors too.”
Addison was feeling strangely buoyant. Despite the desperate, ramshackle nature of their plan, they were finally doing something. He was terrified, exhilarated, swept up in the jangly jitteriness of it all, and he felt a sudden kinship with ancient warriors down the ages. He was like all those long-departed souls who had awoken on the dawn of battle, knowing the day would end in only one of two ways: victory or death.
“Run it again?” Taka whispered. “To be sure?”
“We don’t have time,” Addison replied. “You know what you have to do. It’s your plan, remember?”
Taka broke into a smile, full-beam and dazzling, and it took Addison’s breath away. It was that smile, the one that had started everything, the falling domino that had taken him from that first meeting in the vision room to the here and now. Before Taka nothing had mattered and now everything did. And to Addison, aside from the hopeless, desperate thing they were about to attempt, Taka’s smile was the most meaningful thing in the entire world.
“Look at you, Addison Moore,” Taka said, brushing his cheek. “Look how far you’ve come.”
“I had rather a lot of help.”
“You know, it’s funny,” Taka continued. “In a weird way you remind me of the levellers.”
“Charming.”
“No, not like that” he grinned, squeezing his hand. “I just mean you sound so certain, so convinced what you’re doing is right. You sound just like them.”
“But I am right.”
Taka beamed. “Well there you go.”
And in that moment Addison finally understood the levellers, grasped the truth at the heart of their tyranny. They hadn’t always been monsters, once they had simply been refugees fleeing events beyond their control. Yes their reaction was abhorrent, but they were products of an abhorrent world. What mattered was that they’d tried to do something about it, and more importantly do it properly. They stuck to a code: excuse, explain, accuse, proclaim. As outlandish as it was, it explained everything: the courtroom charade, the farcical attempt at legality and due process. The act hadn’t been for Addison, it had been for the levellers. They were true believers, and doing things properly mattered to them. The arcane ritual of a trial still held meaning.
But Addison saw now there was no such thing as meaning. There was no objective truth, no higher plane from where meaning derived. In the end all that mattered was what people decided mattered. After all, wasn’t all of human history just people making up things as they went along, deciding this mattered while that didn’t?
No meaning but the meaning you make. That was it, the truth, the secret, the trick to life. Accept that you made your own meaning and from that point on the path was clear. The levellers had decided Hannah’s death meant something, Addison and Taka had decided her life meant more. All that remained was who was right. And today, finally, Addison was feeling very righteous indeed.
“Time to go,” he said, gesturing at the door.
“One more thing,”
