It struck the Overseer – only a glancing blow, by the looks, but there was blood and she screamed murder. Then Grierson strode to the edge of the balcony, lifted his rifle, and fired.
Once: at the man who had thrown the makeshift spear. Again: at the woman by his side.
He must have shot her in the head because an arc of gore spattered across the people standing behind. Luke’s eyes closed reflexively but he felt something warm splash against his cheek and gagged.
He dabbed at it with his cuff and blinked, then saw Jackson shoving his way towards the two people who’d been hit.
There was screaming now, and panic. The unity of the crowd had ripped apart. Most were trying to turn and flee, but many were surging towards the thin line of guards around the MADhouse entrance.
They could do it, Luke thought. There were enough of them.
‘At will!’ Grierson yelled. ‘At will!’
Luke heard more shots go off and more people screaming, but still he and others kept going. This was it, he thought. They’d get no second chances after this.
‘No!’
The voice had come from up above, from the balcony, and there was only one person it could belong to. It made the Overseer’s threats and Grierson’s commands seem as inconsequential as a child trying to overrule its parents.
But there was no more time to analyse it. Luke doubled over with the pain that slammed into him, as heavy and terrifying as his workstation hoist. He howled, and heard a stricken animal yelping in his own voice. He tried to curl up to minimize the agony, but it was everywhere, in every cell of him.
He wanted just for an instant, fervently, to die so it would end.
Then the wave of torment rolled over him and he was beached on the other side. He lay there gasping, flat on his back with tears streaming from his eyes. His abdomen was heaving as if there was an alien inside about to burst out. He coughed and it sent excruciating ripples through every part of him. He needed to spit, and turned his head as carefully as if his neck was made of glass.
From his sideways viewpoint, he realized that everyone he could see was in the same state. The square was full of fallen, writhing, groaning people. The Security guards too, by the look of it, though his vision was too blurry to be certain.
So that was Skill, Luke thought, when he found himself able to think. The sexy, subtle magic from Abi’s books. The Skill with which smouldering Equals seduced women, wove exquisite illusions for them, and punished those who tried to hurt their girl.
In reality, an agony so excruciating you wished you were dead.
How could you fight against that? How could you win against people who could do that? Not people – monsters. It didn’t matter that there were hardly any of them. There didn’t need to be.
Jackson was going to have to come up with a better plan than today’s, that was for sure.
Luke let his head fall back onto the gritty ground. All around him he could hear people sobbing, swearing; a few throwing up.
Then in his peripheral vision – movement. A pair of black boots came to a halt by the side of his face. The toecap of one insinuated itself beneath his cheek and turned his head. He looked up into Kessler’s meaty face as the man bent over him.
‘Wishing you’d let me catch you earlier, Hadley?’
The tip of a long baton tapped the row of eyelets on Kessler’s boots – not impatiently. Slowly. As if he had all the time in the world.
‘Now here’s a funny thing,’ Kessler continued. ‘When we were trying out our stunners on a few troublemakers earlier, we found they weren’t having quite the usual effect. Seems some scallywag must have been messing with the settings. But don’t you worry. I can do this the old-fashioned way.’
Kessler grinned, his lips going thin like a dog’s. The baton stopped tapping. Luke saw the black length of it upraised above his head.
‘I’m going to miss you, E-1031. But they’ll take good care of you where you’re going.’
Luke closed his eyes before Kessler’s arm smashed down.
When he came round, his head felt twice its normal size. He couldn’t see. For a terrified moment he was convinced that Kessler’s blow had done awful damage, detached something in his head beyond repairing. Then he thought his eyes must be swollen shut.
It was only once his vision had adjusted that he realized he was in a cramped, windowless space.
And it was moving.
17
Luke
He was in the back of a vehicle. A small one. So it wasn’t one of Security’s prisoner transport wagons – but it wasn’t Angel’s stolen van either.
He was lying on what felt like folded tarpaulin, which protected his tenderized body from the vehicle’s hard shell, and a couple of blankets had been draped over him. He had a bandage around his head. So someone cared about the state he was in.
But was that only so he’d be able to bear interrogation upon his arrival?