The man scrambled back up the bank, desperate to get out of the dell and away. He’d come back to round up the last of the Deaf Squad troopers. They’d all been ordered back to base. The Allears were already there. He was the last one to return. Which means no one will find him, he thought. No one will know.
With that realisation, the panic subsided, replaced by a calm assurance. He looked down into the shadows of the dell, deaf to the threats of his screaming Chief of Command.
Shoulders back, face composed, Trooper Sixty returned to his truck and drove away.
–
Establishing the whereabouts of the Chief of Command became a priority in theory. Little was done in practice.
The cerebral whereabouts of Governor Blix was also unknown – this, despite the fact she was conscious and confined to quarters.
Gone was the immaculate bun and sharp grey suit. Blix spent her days huddled in a corner of her room. Tributaries of silver hair fell on her shoulders and over her face. The skin on her arms was red-raw. Bleeding scratches covered her legs.
Her wide eyes beheld harrowing hallucinations that tormented her day and night. Crouching in the corner, rocking on her heels, she whispered warnings to herself.
Too late came Fentlow’s discovery of her supply of laced Meezel.
She was lost forever down a fathomless hole, in the company of her imagined horrors.
–
Ursel had expected to see Wella at Wydeye’s Eastgate arch. Instead, it was Chase who met her. She saw him linger, eyes downcast, as she dismounted the horse and bade farewell to Estrin.
She approached Chase. They embraced briefly, Chase awkwardly, then they walked in silence, over the bridge that spanned Wydeye Deep, towards Standings Cross and the Telltale Circus. A Special Forces Ops truck drove past them. Ursel flinched and looked away.
Once they reached the other side, Chase stopped and held her arm. Reading his expression, Ursel handed him a notepad and pencil. “There’s something I need to tell you. It can’t wait,” he wrote.
Ursel studied his face, then nodded. She led him to a tea bar next door to the reopened tramway stop opposite the Circus.
They sat in the shade of the bar’s awning, either side of a pallet-top table. Chase stared at his glass of iced green tea, trembling hands knotted in his lap. He had longed to see Ursel again, had feared that he never would. Now he couldn’t bear to look at her. And it wasn’t because of the scars that etched her face.
“Talk to me, Chase.”
So he did. He wrote slowly at first, telling his story from the beginning. Then, once he overcame the hurdle of starting, he found he couldn’t stop. Or, he was afraid of stopping, afraid of missing something out, failing to make a full confession. He scribbled frantically, his writing barely legible.
Ursel read his scrawl, not saying a word.
His confession complete, Chase dropped the pencil and sat on his hands. By slow degrees, he dared to look up. He still couldn’t meet her eyes. Instead, he looked at her mouth, watching it move, reading her reaction in her lips alone.
Ursel did not speak. Not for some time. Her mouth tightened. Chase felt sick.
Eventually, she said, “I think you know what I’m going to say.”
Chase sighed, his eyes dropping to the table. He picked up the pencil again and slowly wrote a single word in tall, capital letters. “WHY.”
Ursel didn’t respond. He knew she wouldn’t. It was down to him to answer the question he had been asking himself since the Contest, when Ursel had been arrested and his house of cards collapsed.
“At first, I thought it was because of Brann,” he wrote, “but that was an easy excuse. Then, I thought it was because I blamed the Scene and I wanted revenge. But that was just another get-out. I even let myself think it was because the A had a hold on me, that I was in too deep. Lame, but easy to believe.” He paused.
Ursel read the words. Her mouth did not move.
His chest tight, his heart stone-heavy, he continued to write. “They were all excuses. Truth is, I didn’t do it because of anyone else. I felt like I’d gained something. A sense of power, I guess. Control. It got so as I needed it, like it set me apart, made me stronger. And that’s the real reason. That’s why. I did it for me.”
Ursel bit her lip and slowly nodded. She took the pencil from him and said, “Look at me.”
He hesitated, afraid, then dared to meet her eyes.
“I appreciate your honesty,” she said. “I know that must’ve been hard. I’m afraid what I’m about to say might feel even harder.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending.
“What you did – it upsets me, but it doesn’t surprise me.”
Chase almost choked from the blow.
“Hear me out,” she said. “I knew from the start you had your own agenda. Your search for Wella wasn’t for her benefit. You did little to hide your prejudice of the Scene. You failed to ask the right questions because you kept your mind firmly closed. You didn’t even try because you assumed you already knew the answers. So, no, I’m not surprised.
“But that doesn’t matter because that’s not you anymore. I thought I saw something in you, hoped that your experience of the Scene would open your mind. And it did. It has. You’ve changed, Chase. I read the story you wrote. I know the walkout was your idea. You’re putting right the wrongs of a different person. And that’s okay, because he’s not around to do it himself.”
She reached out and touched his arm. “Let your honesty lay to rest your guilt. Be who you’ve become and make a better job of it.” She handed back the pencil. “Now, enough wallowing. Where’s Wella?”
He struggled to process her words and recover from her touch. He blinked, disorientated by the sudden switch, then wrote, “I’m
