Awake

Chapter Fifty - Into The Light

They all agreed. It was perfect. Terrifying and overwhelming and intimidating, but perfect.

"What do we do now?" Miriam asked, in a trembling voice.

"We head down there," Nigs pointed into the valley, automatically. "There'll be a river at the bottom."

"Shouldn't we go back?" Sandy frowned. "Tell people that the outside is ok?"

"We should look around first," Jonathan countered. "You never know. There may be people living outside, people who've been here for generations already. Nigs is right. We should head to the river."

"Follow it down," Carmen suggested. "All the way to the sea, or as close as we dare get. As close as we have rations for. If we're going to find a settlement, it'll be along the river."

"Where do you suppose we are?" Miriam mused. "Where do you think this used to me?"

"Don't know, don't care," Carmen replied. "It's our land now. We belong here."

"Onward?" Jonathan suggested.

"After you, brave leader," Nigs gestured expansively. "After you."

Natalia and Kaede stopped just their side of the barricades. Beyond them, a small guard of perhaps ten adults stood gathered around a young woman holding onto a white flag. Natalia waited until the woman looked up and then made deliberate eye contact. The woman approached, waving her flag like a shield.

"I wish to speak to your leader," she said. "To John Sandor."

"John Sandor is away at the moment," Natalia replied. "I am in charge in his absence. You may speak to me."

The woman didn't look best pleased with this, and nor did the man at her shoulder.

"You cannot deny the right of leadership," Kaede told them. "She is his second-in-command. In his absence, she leads. There is nothing you can quarrel with."

The woman took a deep breath. "I wish to parley with the leaders of this coup."

"So we gathered," Natalia said dryly. "That would be me. Soldier Natalia Armstrong. This is my second-in-command, Soldier Kaede Nam."

"I am Soldier Emilia Willows," the woman saluted respectfully. "This is my husband, Soldier Jordan Robinson."

"It is our pleasure," Natalia returned to the salute. "What do you wish to discuss?"

Emilia brushed a stray strand of hair out of her face and hesitated, as if unsure how to continue.

"What has happened here?" Jordan interrupted. "What is going on in the high command?"

"There has been a systematic takeover," Natalia replied. "We have assumed command."

Emilia put out a hand to stop her husband talking.

"I understood as much," she answered. "But I would like to understand how and why a small party of rebels was able to overthrow our most skilled soldiers."

Natalia told her the story, in simplified form. She explained what they had learned from the archives, the Nevera papers, their own discoveries. She told them everything they had come to understand, except Bone's final confession before she died. That was still, and always would be, a secret.

Throughout all of this, Emilia listened politely, with Jordan shifting his feet and looking murderous by her shoulder. Natalia didn't let him bother her. It was Emilia's attention she needed, Emilia who had taken charge.