“Hey, guys?”

  I jumped as Rachel’s voice came through my earpiece. “Rachel?”

  “The one and only. Glad to hear you’re alright; not sure what happened to the train station, but once we lost the Zealots we turned around, and the tunnel was blocked completely. Only just made it above ground at City Station. Noah’s here too. We’re both okay.”

  I was about to tell her what Hud had done, but he shook his head; mouthing please don’t.

  He wasn’t ready for the others to know what he was capable of. I kept my mouth shut for the time being. Now wasn’t a great time anyway. “Hud and I are at the gallery. Couldn’t blow up the antenna ‘cause it’s swarming with Shadows. I’m going after Wheeler.”

  Glass broke somewhere at the front of the gallery.

  “Sounds like they’re coming,” said Hud. “I’ll hold them off. You go after Wheeler.” He moved toward the sound, disappearing behind the wall.

  I nodded. “Hud’s gonna need some backup outside. Can you guys get here?”

  “There soon. Just found some of those awful yellow share bikes.” Rachel was puffing, obviously pedalling hard.

  “They look ridiculous,” growled Noah. “If I die riding one of these things, I’m going to haunt their headquarters.”

  I chuckled. “Stay safe out there; Kindred patrols are roaming inside the exclusion zone.”

  Gunshots ripped through the air from the front of the gallery. Hud had engaged the guards.

  I moved toward the basement entrance at the front desk. No guards here either. Pushing open the basement door, I was hit with a rush of damp air. It felt quiet down there. Maybe Wheeler wasn’t here at all.

  My concern was quickly shut down as I rounded the bottom of the stairs. At the back of the basement, in front of the entrance to Wheeler’s artefact room, stood a line of children. Arms crossed, pupils black. None of them wore dampers; they didn’t need to. Wheeler’s Pulse had a different effect on these kids. They weren’t transformed into Zealots. They were corrupted, changed on the inside, turned into cold, calculating murderers. And all ten of them were watching me.

  A flare formed to my right, and I leaped out of the way. The oldest child stared at me with a wry smile on his face. None of them had moved, but they didn’t have to. The Pulse had strengthened their abilities, allowed them to flare despite the interference from me and all the other kids.

  More flares burst as the kids let loose, firing at me again and again, exploding the air around me. A flare hit my chest and burned. I swore and rolled behind one of the mattresses left on the ground, lifting it up to protect against their line of sight. If they couldn’t see me, they couldn’t flare at me.

  The mattress caught fire, then blew apart in a burst of gas. One of them had vaped it.

  Another flare burst next to my head, catching the end of my hair alight. I swatted at it, putting it out as a flare seared my left leg. If I stayed here much longer, they’d kill me.

  I ran for the exit, stopping halfway up the stairs to see if I’d been followed. Nobody came after me. The kids were protecting Wheeler inside the artefact room.

  The grenades were still in my pack. Thankfully none of the kids’ flares had targeted it, or we’d all be burnt to dust. Which reminded me to take my gun from my belt too, so they couldn’t blow me up with it like Hud had done to the Kindred. I’d forgotten the gun was even there, but it wasn’t like I’d had a chance to use it.

  I couldn’t even think about using the grenades on the kids. It wasn’t their fault they were like this; they were just like Eden. Lost, confused, and controlled by Wheeler’s Pulse. I had to take them down without hurting them. Not seriously, anyway.

  Hiding in the stairwell, I rummaged through the pack trying to find something useful. The taser on my belt was powerful, but only had a couple of uses. Not enough for ten kids.

  There. A smoke grenade. If I could interrupt the kids’ line of sight, they couldn’t flare at me.

  A plan formed in my mind, and I looked up at the sprinkler system on the roof, installed in case of fire.

  This could work.

  I snuck back down to the base of the stairs, took a deep breath, and threw the smoke grenade. There was a bang, and the room began to fill with smoke.

  The kids started shouting obscenities. They knew I was coming.

  The smoke reached the stairwell, and I took the chance, diving into the room and behind a mattress that sat against the wall to the left. A second later the sprinklers started, gushing water from the roof to put out the non-existent fire. The room was thick with smoke, and I choked on it, but it was time to make my move. I ran to the artefact room door hoping that the kids had left their posts. They hadn’t, and one loomed out of the smoke at me as I neared the door. He was only a few years younger than me, but he was tall, and strong. He was trying to flare but couldn’t in all the smoke and water; there was too much going on, even for his Pulse-enhanced abilities. He raised his right fist to punch me, but I ducked, driving the taser into his stomach. He dropped, and swore, convulsing in the pool of water collecting on the basement floor.

  I was hit on the head from behind, and my vision blurred. A fist connected with my face, and I staggered back, head reeling. A smaller girl with blonde hair swung at me again. Her face was wild, her teeth bared as if she wanted to sink them into my neck. She came closer, and I dove forward under her punch, connecting the taser with her stomach. She went down like the older one, who was still twitching a few steps away. He glared at me, unable to control his limbs, or focus enough to use his abilities.

  A face emerged from the smoke. Then another, and another. The remaining eight children surrounded me in a circle, all different heights and sizes, but there was no way I could take them all down before they overwhelmed me.

  Unless…

  I looked at the sprinkler directly over my head. They were all staring at me, but none of them were looking at the ceiling. The sprinkler arced water down around me like a dome. Eden’s trick just might work, but it involved turning off the damper. This close to Wheeler, who knew what the effect would be, but I had to try.

  I switched off the damper and my mind became blurry, swirling and tumbling, twisting between joy and anger, euphoria and fury. I tuned, and the water froze as it came out of the sprinkler, turning into shards of ice that clattered to the floor. I caught a large one as it fell, and threw it at the group, knocking three of the kids onto their backs. The remaining five rushed towards me, but the ice made them lose their footing and they slipped backwards into the growing puddle on the floor. Using the ice as a platform, I switched the taser to continuous mode, flicked the switch, and dropped it into the puddle just as they stood to attack again. All eight of them dropped to the floor, twitching.

  My head spun, and I wanted to vomit, and lie down, and give up, and kill everyone in the room.

  No. Get it together, Ari. I gritted my teeth and stared with laser focus on the water the children lay in, ignoring the hurricane in my brain.

  Give up, Ari. Give up and die.

  No!

  I blinked and stared again at the water, my mind filling with blood and rage and death.

  My mouth twisted into a scream as I blocked out the awful, terrifying things buffeting my mind.

  I lowered the water’s resonance until ice formed on the surface. It grew, and covered them, and soon all the water on the floor turned to ice, immobilising the children, encasing them like a cocoon. It stopped the taser from shocking them, too, which they were probably relieved about. None of them could see the ice that held them, as they were all stuck staring straight up. They wouldn’t be able to break out of that in a hurry, or use their abilities to melt it. If they did, the taser would shock them again. They were trapped for now.

  Water still poured from the sprinklers, though, and I didn’t want them to drown, so I ran to the basement entrance and froze the water pipe solid. Then, I switched the damper back on. Immediately the awful thoughts subsided, my mind stopped spinning, and my breathing slowed. I sat for a moment, panting. The water stopped, dripping from the ceiling in bursts. The smoke was still thick in the air, making the room look almost like an Arctic lake covered in mist. It would almost have been beautiful, if it weren’t for the ten angry children swearing at me from their ice prison on the floor.

  I stood and walked toward the artefact room entrance, trying not to slip on the ice, and staying out of the sightline of the children in case they managed to flare.

  Wheeler had to be here.

  If the whole city felt like I had when I’d turned the damper off, no wonder it was such a bloodbath out there. Those kids on the floor must have had the same things running through their mind, too. Wheeler couldn’t be allowed to continue this horror.

  It was time for him to die.

  FIFTY

  The door creaked as I pushed it open, and the air inside was still. Suffocating. In the artefact room, everything lay as it was when we’d come through the night before.

  Had it only been one night? Somehow the dark curtains felt even blacker, like the room had no edges, but continued as an infinite void, an endless space containing all the darkest moments of humanity.

  I’d felt like this in the Sanctuary at Ettney: the horrible realisation that the Kindred had been working throughout history, that every time humanity was at its worst, the Shadows were there, orchestrating, lurking, consuming.

  The rows of artefacts still sat on their plinths, illuminated by spotlights as tributes to the horror of war, the brutality of our kind, the violence and the darkness that stained our past, our present, and would likely stain our future.

  At the end of the last row, movement.

  Wheeler stepped toward a sword with an intricately carved hilt, his face lit by the spotlight bouncing off the plinth.

  “You know, this sword drew the very first blood in the crusades.” He smiled, running his hand along the edge of the blade. “Bit dull now, but still so beautiful.”

  I frowned. “You’re a psychopath.” I filled the words with as much venom as I could muster. “You’re a psychopath, and I’m going to kill you.”

  Wheeler laughed, a deep belly laugh that filled the space, echoing around the room. “You don’t get it, do you? After everything you’ve seen, after everything I’ve shown you.”

  He walked to the right, and I moved left, keeping as much distance between us as possible.

  “Get what?”

  “What I’ve been trying to teach you. What I’ve been trying to teach all of you.” He ran his hand over a helmet with a crack in the middle but didn’t bother to explain where it was from. “What you’ve seen out there; that’s truth. That’s freedom. Not the pathetic veneer of respectability, of supposed goodness, of ‘society’” He curved his fingers in air quotes as he said society, as if the very notion was ridiculous. “That out there is the truth!” he yelled. “That, out there; that is humanity revealed! Filthy, angry, brutal, and honest. This is who we really are.” He shook his head, as if disappointed in me. “After everything you’ve seen you still don’t get it.”

  Wheeler kept walking, touching each object on its plinth, revelling in its history. He stopped at a yellowing human skull. “This one is local. It belonged to the first white man to settle in this region. He shot and killed four First Nations men because he thought they were trying to attack his family. They were actually trying to warn him of a brown snake they’d seen crawling under his house. Adam Cole, his name was. Hence, Coleton. This whole city is a tribute to a murderer.”

  “That’s awful,” I said quietly.

  “That’s humans,” snapped Wheeler. “And you’d be a pathetic fool to think anything less.” He pointed wildly at the roof. “Those people up there, they deserve this. They deserve all of it. You’ve seen what’s truly in their hearts, what their deepest desires really are. It’s not honour, or loyalty, or love.” He picked up the skull for a moment, looking it in the eyes. “It’s hate, isn’t it, Adam? That’s what made you shoot those men. Hatred. Arrogance. Fear.”

  “But you’re the one making them do this,” I replied, sidling to the left to keep away from Wheeler, who was steadily advancing toward me. “You’re bringing it out of them.”

  “No,” he shook his head. “You know that’s not true. Deep down, you know. They deserve this.”

  I looked around at the artefacts, dozens of them giving testimony to what he said. I felt the blood cry out from the swords, heard the tears of the children at the end of the guns, saw the devastation unleashed by war and anger and hatred. Maybe Wheeler was right. Maybe we did deserve this.

  Maybe we didn’t deserve to be saved.

  “You can feel it, can’t you?” he smiled. “You know I’m right. And in a world where we no longer exist, the Shadows will remain. They’ll be the truth of us. They’ll be the testimony to our arrogance. Our greed. The Shadows are the truth of our world, and the truth of our humanity.”

  “Truth is freedom,” I said.

  “Precisely.”

  I felt the cold spot on my stomach burn again. The seed called to me, the darkness reaching out as it had in my bedroom, in the Chapel, in my darkest days since. So many nights I’d laid awake reliving the violence at Ettney, drawn into a spiral of fear and sadness and suffocating terror, feeling like a part of me wanted to surrender to it all.

  If I was honest with myself, a part of me did agree with Wheeler. I’d spent the last days trying to save this city, despite that feeling. The guys who’d yelled at me from their car near Century Park, the anger seething in the suburbs, the media stirring up the mob, the politicians and bureaucrats hoarding wealth and bribes, the rage that was brewing everywhere we looked; Coleton was broken, and everybody knew it. Maybe it would be easier to start again.

  There was a thrumming in my ears I hadn’t noticed until now. It had started when I’d entered the room. Wheeler’s Pulse. It had grown so strong that even the damper couldn’t fully protect me.

  I shook my head, clearing my mind of the thoughts he’d planted.

  “No,” I said. “We deserve to be saved. They deserve to be saved.”

  Wheeler scoffed, but I ignored him.

  “Yes, there’s darkness out there,” I said. “Yes, we’ve done terrible, awful things. I’ve done terrible, awful things. But that doesn’t mean I’m not worth saving. That doesn’t mean this city, these people aren’t worth saving. Nobody is too far gone. Nobody is so dark they can’t make it back.”

  Wheeler laughed. “Tell that to your friend, Hud.”

  “What’s he got to do with this?”

  “You’ve seen what he’s capable of. You haven’t wondered why?”

  I frowned at Wheeler.

  “Never mind,” he laughed. “You’ll know soon enough.”

  “What you’re doing out there; that isn’t who those people really are. They might be hiding secrets, they might have dark impulses, but freedom isn’t acting on the darkness, it’s being free to choose the light.”

  Wheeler shook his head. “You’re just a child,” he said. “You know nothing of humanity.”

  “I know that I’m going to kill you,” I said. “And whatever you’ve done to Hud, I’m going to stop it.”

  He shook his head, as if I was the dumbest girl on earth. “I’ve done nothing to him. But if you really want to kill me, do it.” Wheeler stepped out into the middle of the room and got down on both knees.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, staring at him.

  “Do it. Kill me. It won’t stop this. Nothing can stop this now. I’ve played my part. I’ve done my duty, and I’m ready.”

  “You’re insane.”

  “All the more reason to kill me.” His voice rose to a scream. “Kill me, you pathetic little bitch!”

  Now was my chance. I ran for Wheeler, picking up a long, curved blade from its stand. He smiled as I ran for him, and he stretched out his arms, the same as Hackman had done at the Chapel when he burned. I reached Wheeler, and he didn’t stop me, didn’t try to run. He grinned again when I pressed the blade to his throat. A trickle of blood ran down his neck.

  This close to him, looking him in the eyes, I hesitated. He was human, just like me. He was broken, just like I was, but maybe he could get better. Maybe he could be saved. I’d just given a big speech about redemption. If I really believed it, maybe he could—

  Wheeler grabbed my hand and pressed the blade into his throat. It cut deep, and he smiled, coughing up blood that soaked his teeth.

  “I deserve this,” he choked out. “That’s the truth, and this is my freedom.”

  Wheeler’s eyes rolled back in his head, and I stood frozen, shocked at his confession. He fell, neck peeling away from the blade, and hit the floor dead.

  That was it. It was over.

  I switched off the damper, and immediately the tornado hit my mind.

  The Pulse was still active. Wheeler was dead, but somehow his tone was still alive.

  FIFTY-ONE

  I turned my damper back on and stared at Wheeler’s body, blood pooling from the wound in his neck. He wasn’t breathing. He was definitely dead. So, why was the signal still throbbing through the city?

  Through the open door back into the basement, I could hear the kids screaming. The city overhead would still be chaos. How was the Pulse still broadcasting?

  It was strong in here, too, much stronger than outside the building.

  At the back of the room, I noticed a shiny black piece of equipment pushed up against the wall, near the entrance to the tunnels. It was hard to see in the darkness, which was why I hadn’t seen it before. I’d been too distracted by Wheeler.

  I walked toward it. It was a big box with flashing lights and dials, and must have been what Wheeler had brought in through the docks. Cables led from the back of the box up through a hole in the roof, probably running all the way to the Channel Three antenna. I found the power cord coming out the back and followed it to a power point hidden behind the curtains to the left of the carved doors. Taking a deep breath, I pulled the plug. A spark arced from the power point, and the lights went out in the artefact room, plunging the space into darkness. The unit didn’t turn off, though. It was still running, and the signal was still visible on the dials, which hummed with the Pulse energy.

 

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