Wiped by Nicola Claire Page A

still held high enough to use should he need it. The Cardinals all held theirs up as well.
    Even Trent. Even disappointed to such a degree, he maintained the rebel leader.
    I lowered mine and took a slow step into the room. Trent stiffened.
    “Lena,” he warned. I softly shook my head in answer.
    Nirbhay ran across the room to a group of women, embracing one as soon as he got there. Her wary eyes watched us, dirt and grime etching the deep lines on her face. I couldn’t tell how old she was, whether she was his mother or sister or even grandmother. Age had not worn well on these people.
    My heart ached.
    “Hello,” I said, my voice carrying in the stunned silence of the vast room.
    Nirbhay wriggled free of the woman’s grasp and sprinted back to my side, then gripped my hand with small, gnarled fingers, tugging me towards the woman he’d just hugged.
    “Lena,” Trent warned, his tone more urgent.
    “He wants to introduce me,” I said, almost laughing at Nirbhay’s enthusiasm as he dragged me across the surprisingly clean floor. Evidence of where it had been swept was obvious. As were the areas set aside for sleeping, eating, and social living.
    This was their home, all right. And Nirbhay had led us directly to it.
    That should have been warning enough. I shouldn’t have needed Trent’s concerned words echoing behind me. This was their home. Their safe harbour in a world broken. The one place they could flee to when the aboveground got too dark.
    I should have known better.
    We reached the little group of stunned immobile women, Nirbhay smiling widely, showing off his missing teeth and that gap in the top of his mouth. I offered a smile of my own. Tentative. Hopeful.
    The woman who was his mother-sister-grandmother stared at me for a long moment, and then dark eyes darted to the boy holding my hand.
    She said something. Calvin translated.
    My gaze drifted over my shoulder to Trent.
    He was already running, laser gun raised, panic and dread obvious in his wild blue eyes.
    “What have you done?” Calvin’s voice sounded out in our ears. Her words, not his.
    Nirbhay blinked. The woman pulled a laser gun from God knows where. And all I could hear was the whine as it charged up and the sound of Trent’s hard footfalls too far away on the swept clean dirt.

Eleven

Let Us Help You
Trent
    T here was no way I’d reach her. No way in hell. But I ran, shouting a warning, letting the electronic whine of the gun punctuate the fact.
    In moves too quick to assimilate, the woman reached out and grabbed a fistful of Lena’s hair, hauling her against her side, the laser gun’s muzzle under her chin.
    Everything stopped.
    My heart. The world. Even the air stood still, hanging suspended between us; heavy, thick, threatening.
    My eyes sought out Lena’s. So blue. So calm. They stared back.
    The sound of my laser gun hitting the dirt at my feet rebounded inside the room, the clatter ricocheting off the high, domed ceiling. My pulse setting up an accompanying beat inside my head.
    The woman said something in that fucking pidgin Anglisc.
    Calvin oh-so-calmly translated the words inside our ears.
    “No one move.”
    Standard bad-guy warning. We didn’t need it; our feet might as well have been cemented to the floor. My hands were already up, out to the sides in a show of surrender. I pulled my gaze off Lena - hard though it was - and looked the woman in the eyes.
    There was no compassion there. Just hardness. A hardness borne of a life lived in hell.
    I spread my fingers, widening my non-threatening stance.
    “Easy,” I said softly. She pressed the gun muzzle harder into Lena’s neck. “Is everyone unarmed?” I asked, not looking over my shoulder to Alan and the Cardinals at my back.
    “Dropped ours when you did,” Alan supplied.
    “No one’s moving, Trent,” Beck offered in a show of solidarity I didn’t, at that moment, have time to appreciate.
    I swallowed thickly, my eyes still target-locked on the old woman.