‘Fucking Saints!’ Dellian yelled. He sprinted forwards, firing as he went, spraying bullets in the general direction of the second Neána. The creature fired its weapon, and the portico exploded behind him.
A blastwave slammed into him, sending him sprawling. The armour suit’s reactive carapace absorbed the brunt of the force while he curled up to roll through the impact. Adaptive musculature brought him back up to his feet fast, and sensor graphics swept across his optik, tracking enemy targets. The micro-missile launch pod snapped up out of his backpack, ready for acquisition data. Four more Neána were powering into the plaza, wearing grey carbon exoskeletons with multiple weapon attachments. Electronic warfare systems went active, blitzing the plaza in a digital haze.
Dellian was about to fire his missiles when the sky overhead began to brighten. His sensor view flipped to vertical. High above, a brilliant golden fireball was punching down through the atmosphere, a rigid amber pillar of overheated air stretching out behind it. He took an instinctive step backwards as the fireball seemed to accelerate. Its radiance flooded the plaza, turning his vision monochrome.
‘Oh, crap.’ He turned to run.
The fireball struck the fountain, and light detonated out, overwhelming everything.
Dellian blinked the glare away and stared through the high fence that guarded the perimeter of the Immerle estate. Twenty-five kilometres away, on the other side of the jungle-clad valley, Afrata shone like the sun, every building gleaming as if it contained a solar flare. He shrugged and jogged on towards the sports fields where his yeargroup should be waiting. They were due to play a football match against the Ansaru clan that afternoon. Personally, Dellian couldn’t wait another eight months until they all reached their tenth birthday, when Alexandre had promised them that they could start training in the orbital arena. He just loved the idea of them flying around in zero gee, somersaulting in slow-mo, bouncing off walls to soar like a bird . . .
A lokak screeched out its hunting cry. Dellian stopped again, scanning the fence. That had sounded very close.
‘There’s nothing there, you know.’
He spun around to see Yirella standing behind him. But this Yirella was fully grown, easily twice his height, and she didn’t have hair any more. Even so, she was wearing a T-shirt and sports shorts, just like him. Yirella always did join the boys on the pitch to play their games, unlike Tilliana and Ellici. He gawped at her for a moment; somehow, this older Yirella was even more captivating than the one he knew . . . although he knew this one as well. I don’t understand.
‘Then what was that sound?’ he asked, smug that he’d outsmarted her, of all people.
‘A memory.’ She went down on her knees, putting her big head level with his, and held both hands towards him. ‘Do you trust me, Del?’
Outside the fence, a whole chorus of lokak screeches began, rising in pitch and ferocity. He knew that meant they were gathering, ready to assault the estate at the bidding of the Neána. Always the Neána, the eternal enemy, tricksters and betrayers.
‘Yes,’ Dellian said nervously, trying to look at her and not out at the tangled jungle beyond the fence.
‘Good.’ She took his hands. Her fingers were cool and dry and immensely strong. Yirella’s presence always made him content, but this time the physical touch was profound. It wasn’t just his skin that was feeling her; the sensation of touch was sinking deep into his flesh, cooling and relaxing his muscles. He hadn’t realized he was so tense.
‘This is important, Del. None of this, what you’re seeing – the estate, Juloss – none of it is real.’
‘What?’ He turned his head a fraction.
‘No. Look at me, Del. Keep looking.’
Her eyes were wide with love and concern. The emotion was so strong that it was all he could do just to stop his eyes from watering. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said miserably.
‘There is one thing I know you do understand: I am here, Del. I am with you. And I will never leave you. Not ever, because I love you.’
The world behind her was vibrating, as if he were shaking his head frantically. But he wasn’t; no way could he shift his gaze from her beautiful eyes.
‘This is like a game, Del. I want you to play it with me. Will you do that?’
‘Yes,’ he whispered. Scared now. The world was shaking so badly he didn’t know why he couldn’t feel it.
‘There are bad things out there, but they’re not the beasts we were always warned about. These bad things are like nightmare monsters, and they invade your head to fill it with really evil ideas. But I’m here with you now, so together we can fight them off.’
‘I don’t want to fight. I want to go home.’
‘We are home, Del. That’s why we’re here in the estate. This is so you – the very start of you, so fundamental they can’t corrupt it like everything else. You belong here.’
‘Yes.’
‘So we have to take away the abuse they’re suffocating you in. Do you remember your yeargroup?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re your squad now, aren’t they?’
He closed his eyes briefly, seeing the laughing faces of his yeargroup, their features distorting as if they were reflecting off a buckled mirror, changing and ageing. Except – ‘Rello,’ he groaned as his friend’s face blackened, cracks splitting open to ooze slimy blood before the vision shrank away to nothing.
‘I know,’ Yirella said gently. ‘He’s gone.’
‘We killed him. It’s our fault. We’re nothing more than prisoners. They chained us at birth.’
‘Nobody chained us, Dellian. We’re free.’
‘No. It’s the Saints. They did this to us, they took away our choice.’ He snarled. ‘I’m glad they’re dead.’
‘What?’
He stared at her shocked face. ‘I’m glad,’ he told her truthfully. The world around them stopped shaking. A reassuring grey crept into the colours, toning down the harshness of the tropical landscape. The so-called Saints had been killed; he remembered seeing it so vividly. The Olyix had shared their
