Two Drones stood tall and silent behind her and beckoned her to stand with the twitch of a gun. She stood up slowly, leaving her pack, gun and bottle on the ground, the water spilling in glugs onto the grass. Their utility suits were clean, they couldn't have come from the chaos Zoe had just stepped out from and, through the small gap between them, she spied an open door on an adjacent building.
The Drone nearest to her kept his gun pointed squarely at her head, twitching again to start her walking towards the open door. Their silence was punctuated once or twice by the crackle of gunfire from inside the Farm, the shots accompanied by the low boom of explosions that vibrated into the soles of her feet. As she walked Zoe threw up again. The impulse came from nowhere and caught her and the Drones by surprise. They sprung around her with guns gripped tightly as the warmed water splattered from her mouth onto her clothes and the grass, and she held up her hand to demonstrate her helplessness. They stood coiled and wordless until she was done, marching her forward as soon as she had recovered.
Inside, the white light of the Farm was strong and unaffected. She walked slowly down identical corridors, occasionally glancing back to her captors for instructions each time they reached a junction. After a few turns, they came to a door with two more Drones standing sentry outside. It opened with a faint hum as she approached making her pause her step, before another twitch from her speechless escort instructed her to enter. She glanced at each of the Drones in turn, unsure of what was about to happen, her heart rising again to drum in her ears.
Stepping inside, Zoe saw that the room was half full of Lifers from the raiding party, perhaps thirty of them. A few lay wounded on the floor as others tended to them whilst the rest stood around the walls, staring forlornly at her as she entered. She smiled a weak smile towards them all, relieved that she was no longer alone but lost as to how to greet them in such circumstance. As she scanned each face she heard her name called out from her left side and turned to see Jennifer rushing towards her with her arms open. She grabbed her roughly in a firm embrace, almost knocking her over, and held her there for a second before pushing her back by the shoulders and checking her up and down.
"You OK?" she asked as she scanned her body.
"Yes I'm fine," Zoe replied, a brief feeling of guilt passing through her as she recalled her race from the chaos and her dead friends a few moments before. "Calum, though..."
"It's OK," Jennifer squeezed her shoulders a little. "You're OK. Come and sit down over here."
She led her by the hand to the empty space in the far corner where she had sat moments earlier. They sat down in silence and stared briefly into each other's eyes, a short moment to share their grief, fear and relief at finding each other, before Zoe looked down towards her hands fidgeting in her lap.
"I ran," she said quietly. "I was so afraid and confused, I didn't know what else to do."
Jennifer placed her hand gently on hers to calm them.
"It's OK," she said again softly. "It was chaos. Everybody freaked. You did the right thing, you'd be dead otherwise."
She brushed a tangled lock of hair from her face.
"How'd you think we all ended up here?"
Zoe smiled gratefully back at her.
"Everybody ran. It was a mess. They knew we were coming."
"How?" Zoe looked at her with surprise, a tear forming in the corner of her left eye as her adrenalin began to fade and the trauma slowly crept up on her.
"I don't know, but they did. There's no question. There were too many of them. Too well-prepared. They were on us as soon as we walked in. No alarms. No Migrants. Just Drones everywhere." Jennifer's voice cracked a little as she said this and her eyes glazed in a way that told Zoe she was replaying some terror from before in her mind.
"Where's Matthew?"
Jennifer didn't answer. She refocused on Zoe briefly before scanning once around the room and disappearing again into her thoughts.
"Is he dead?" Zoe asked bluntly, immediately wishing she'd phrased it better.
"No. No," each word sounded different. The first answered Zoe with clarity, the second was more of an inward sigh, soundtracking the slight fall in her shoulders that Zoe noticed.
"He ran off."
Zoe knew from her tone that whilst it might have been OK for her to run, whilst Jennifer could wrap her arms around Zoe and reassure her that to survive was enough, she didn't feel the same for Matthew. There was a long silence between them, which brought the hushed conversations and moans of pain from around the room to the foreground of Zoe's attention.
The door hissed open and two large Drones strode in and grabbed the nearest person to them, a young man with a shaved head who Zoe didn't recognise. There was a brief moment of panic and indecision as he glanced around the room for assistance, but there were two more Drones stood in plain sight just outside the door, their guns sweeping the room from left to right almost begging for an invitation to fire and their presence kept everybody backed against the walls. The young man's colleague who he'd been talking to moments before stepped forward slightly and tried to hold onto his shoulder, but a swift kick sent him to the ground easily enough and a crack on his skull from a rifle butt made sure he stayed down. He froze motionless in a half crouch on the floor, dark red blood seeping between his fingers where his hand had rushed to inspect the impact and dropping in large sticky globules onto the white floor.
The Drones turned around and yanked the young man out of the room. Zoe watched them push him away down the corridor for a moment before the doors slid shut and cut him out of the moment. There was silence in the room whilst everybody exchanged nervous glances.
"What do you think they'll do?" Zoe whispered to Jennifer.
"I don't know, but that's the third they've taken."
Zoe waited for her to continue, but she didn't.
"Did they bring them back?" Zoe asked, breaking the silence.
Jennifer looked intently at her, unblinking as if she was waiting for something. Her eyes looked incredibly sad Zoe thought, not crying, but glassy, as if they had been emptied out and only the surface remained. As they stared at each other Zoe heard it. A single shot. Far off, but unmistakable. She hadn't noticed how quiet the room had become until that sound punctuated the hush with its dull beat. Jennifer blinked and Zoe understood that none of them came back.
"I'm so sorry," Jennifer said unexpectedly, her gaze still fixed on Zoe. "I should have sent you off with Max. He'd have looked after you."
"No, don't," Zoe took her hand and smiled at her, although tears began to roll down her cheeks at the same time. "I'd rather be here with you. I'd rather be here than anywhere else."
Jennifer smiled and chuckled a little.
"Crazy kid."
She let go of her hand and wiped the tears from her cheek with her thumb, making black streaks across her face from the soot, which made a rough barrier between their skin.
The door hissed open again, making them both jump and Jennifer drop her hand down. The two Drones entered again and scanned around the room, eyeing the wounded on the floor and the faces around the walls that stared silently back at them. Their gaze eventually locked onto Zoe and Jennifer sat on the floor, making Zoe's heart skip a beat and her breathing stop dead.
"Jennifer," the nearest Drone called out.
The sound of her name coming from them felt bizarre. A strangely intimate address in this cold, blood traced room. How did they even know it, Zoe wondered.
Jennifer stood up and took a step towards them.
"No!" Zoe jumped up and grabbed her arm. "No you can't go!"
Zoe went to put herself between Jennifer and the Drones, her fist raised hopelessly, but Jennifer pulled her back before the Drones could get at her and raised her hand to calm them.
"It's OK Zoe, it's OK," she pushed her firmly back towards the wall. "I'll be OK."
She took two more steps towards the Drones, and as one took her roughly by the arm turned back towards Zoe.
"Be safe," she said, and with one more step she was in the hallway and then gone. The doors closed and Zoe stood staring at them in horror.
To her surprise, they opened again almost immediately. Two more Drones walked in and this time walked straight up to Zoe. She almost felt relieved. Perhaps they would be taking her away with Jennifer. Perhaps they were all being released? They took hold of her and marched her out. She didn't make eye contact with the rest of the room, she didn't want to see their faces, didn't want to see their thoughts. Instead, she focused on the corridor outside and noticed with sadness that they were leading her in the opposite direction.
They walked without instruction through the network of corridors, turning sharply every once in a while as they headed to their destination. Most of the corridors were clean and uninhabited, but once or twice they turned a corner into the pockets of death and destruction she had been part of earlier, stepping unceremoniously over the broken and exploded bodies of Drones and Lifers.
Eventually, they came to a small antechamber where five corridors intersected and the Drones stood her in the middle. There was a skylight overhead and Zoe looked up to see the half moon glowing softly above. Her heart was pounding so hard it was painful. She gazed at the moon refusing to look away. If this was the moment they put a bullet in her head, she wanted to die staring at the moon instead of the stark featureless spaces of AarBee's Farm. She heard footsteps to her left side and held her gaze, her teeth clenched down tight together.
"Where is she?"
Zoe recognised the voice at once, it was Matthew. She dropped her gaze and looked across the room to see him standing in the entrance. His clothes were clean, he had no blood or wounds on him.
"Matthew," she exclaimed. "You're alive!"
"Where is she?" he repeated again, he sounded stern. His voice was different somehow. The tenderness and calm that was so characteristic to his tone was gone.
"Jennifer?" she asked cautiously.
"Rachael."
Zoe looked at him blankly. "I don't know who that is."
Matthew stepped closer to her and Zoe stared hard into his face, trying to read him. He seemed so different.
"I know AarBee passed her across, now where is she?"
His eyes flicked briefly towards one of the Drones who raised his gun to her head. She felt it pushing eagerly against her hair and scalp.
"Matthew, I don't understand," she pleaded, and after searching for something else to say, said it again, "I don't understand."
Nobody answered. They stood in silence staring at her. It felt immeasurably cruel to keep her suspended on the edge of her fate for so long, but then, as the moment hung longer she noticed the Drone next to her was making a strange clicking sound. It was almost imperceptible, like he was shivering or stifling a yawn.
"Glitch." She said it aloud, not meaning to.
Realising with a terrifying awareness that this moment might be over before she could react, that this freak of AarBee's make-up was without doubt her only chance to escape before the trigger was pulled, Zoe sprung towards the nearest corridor, knocking the gun from the stuttering Drones hands as she did. She heard it smash onto the ground as she ran but didn't look back. She had to move and she had to move fast. With no idea of which direction to head in, she made random choices left or right at various junctions, pushing her legs as fast as they would pound and almost falling forwards from her speed. As she turned a corner, Zoe found herself in a long corridor that blurred past her without definition. There was a door at the end. She had no idea if it would lead her back to where she had started or into an army of Drones, but she knew it was the door she had to take and drove towards it with un-retractable force. As she reached it, the door began to open but her speed was too great and she smashed through the half opening, feeling her shoulder crunch from the impact before she fell face first onto the ground outside. She looked up briefly, before scrabbling on all fours into a large bush that grew a few paces in front of her. She curled up inside it, feeling the branches and thorns that lay beneath the green leaves scratch and puncture her skin, before lying motionless and feeling the air rip into her gasping lungs.
She lay there in silence for a long time, letting her body recover and watching the door, almost certain that more Drones or Matthew would emerge from it at any second. When no one came she wondered if she should make a break for the darkness of the forest, to head back to the train tracks and the Clearing. She could feel her new life there pulling at her, the roaring fires and smoky air, the quiet of the sleeping chambers and the comfort of her blankets, the beautiful silence of the pool and the role call of names just like hers scratched in the wooden door. But she knew she couldn't leave Jennifer. Without her none of it would be the same, it would be corrupted and spoiled just like before. Just like always.
She had found a family in the Clearing. She hadn't expected to, but she had anyway and she couldn't let it slip through her fingers again. Not this time. She couldn't leave Jennifer here in all the death and madness. Zoe looked back at the trees where they had come from, smiled resignedly towards her future that would have to wait, and crawled slowly out from her hide.
After ducking passed a few lights and doors, Zoe moved into the patchwork of bushes and small trees that tracked the footprint of the building and worked her way around to the opposite side. At the corner, the great white walls fell away and Zoe could see the tall, glass entrance doors of the Atrium. The place looked deserted and she edged closer and closer, taking cover by a low wall and peering over the top towards the vast, eerily still hanger. She could see bullet holes in the walls, long and glinting cracks in the glass, upturned furniture strewn all over the floor. She moved silently inside, placing her feet gently between dark patches of old blood and scattered fragments of debris and spotted the bodies of two Lifers lying next to the welcome desk that sat unattended in the middle of the space. One was still clutching his gun and she moved cautiously forward to take it. As she reached them and went to grab it, she spotted a figure on the far side of the Atrium, the unmistakable black uniform of a Drone. She froze, standing silently with her weight leaning awkwardly on her front foot, not daring to move an inch in case some stray piece of glass gave her away. She bent her knees slowly, praying that they wouldn't crack, and lifted the gun slowly, checking that no straps or debris would drop noisily onto the floor before raising it to her chin and raising herself up in one silent movement.
The Drone had its back to her, looking away down one of the never-ending corridors, rocking gently from foot to foot like a child.
She thought for a moment who it might be, a girl or a boy, young or old, and whether it was fair to shoot them with so little warning, with no opportunity to know their fate. But then she thought of Calum lying still on the ground and of Jennifer lost somewhere in the thick, choking dust, and squeezed the trigger gently and sent her bullet flying invisibly to its mark. Her gun hardly made a sound, but the smack as she hit her target was clear enough and the black-clad figure dropped immediately to the ground. Zoe waited for a second, partly unsure if the Drone was dead, in part amazed at her actions. When it was clear that her shot was good, she ran towards the now unguarded corridor and past her kill, glancing down with morbid curiosity as she went past. It was a woman, a girl really. Eyes still open with a thin line of blood running from her nose onto the ground.
As she moved inwards again from the Atrium, she could hear cracks of gunfire echoing in the distance, and with each sound she bounced down slightly on her knees. Clearly, she wasn't the only one to have taken the opportunity that the glitch had offered. She glanced into a few rooms as she passed by, each one empty and overturned just like the Atrium, but found no other Lifers.
A little further down she reached a corner and peeked her head slowly around the bend. A few bodies lay on the floor, Drones and Lifers. Some sat eerily against the narrow walls, some flat on the floor and a few piled awkwardly on top of each other. Dust still hung in the air, and where it settled it coated the corpses with a dehumanising grey powder. Zoe raised her gun and scanned each body for movement, before edging quietly forwards to where the corridor opened into a broader junction. There were more bodies here and the walls carried massive scars from where the thudding explosions had hit. She noticed that the distant gunfire had stopped and a desperate silence now hovered over the scene.
She looked across the devastation into a large room opposite, the door jammed open by a Drone corpse on the floor, and her gaze suddenly picked out Jennifer. She was crouched under a table, staring back at her with a startled expression. Zoe was about to rush to her when she gestured for her to lie down. Zoe paused for a moment then fell flat to the ground, as two Drones ran purposely through the junction and away into the dust. When they had gone, Zoe jumped immediately up again and rushed into the room.
"You're alive!" Zoe said, crouching down on the floor next to her.
"Only just," she replied, touching a large patch of red glistening on her left thigh.
"I saw Matthew, something's happened to him. I think he's a Drone."
Jennifer stared at her with no emotion in her face.
"You knew?" Zoe asked with shock.
"No. Well, maybe, I don't know. Something happened the other day and perhaps now it all makes sense." She frowned as she tried to work out her thoughts. "I don't understand though.
There was silence for a moment, before the crackle of gunfire close by jolted them back.
"Come on, we need to get out of here."
Zoe stood up and took the strain of Jennifer's arm, leaning back a little and tensing her thighs whilst Jennifer raised herself up, wincing with the pain in her leg.
"I can't get far with this," Jennifer pressed her free hand onto her thigh, looking at the slow stream of blood that oozed through the fabric.
"You'll get far enough, out of this building is good enough for now."
They moved slowly out of the room, Zoe with one hand supporting Jennifer and the other keeping her gun raised and in line with her gaze. She felt powerful now she had killed, ready to kill again if she needed to, to keep them both safe, to get back to the forest.
As they crossed the open space where the four corridors met, heading back towards the Atrium, a voice called out suddenly from the floor.
"Jennifer," the voice was hoarse and breathless, but the name was unmistakable.
"Jennifer," it came again and they both scanned the bodies that lay scattered all around them, looking for the source. There was no movement anywhere and as they stepped around each Lifer one by one, turning them over or leaning down to stare at their bloodied faces, none was alive.
The voice called out again, a little louder now and this time Zoe located it, coming from a Drone who lay crumpled and slumped against the wall on the far side of the junction. She squeezed Jennifer's arm and gestured with her gun towards the man and they both moved cautiously towards him. As they came closer Zoe could see that his body was mutilated and torn, his left shoulder was opened wide, fragments of bone and scorched flesh leaking out from under his shredded black clothes. A crossbow bolt stuck out of his leg and his foot was turned at such an angle that it was surely broken.
"You need to follow me," he said, his lips barely moving but his voice coming clearer now.
"Who are you?" Jennifer asked. "How do you know my name?"
"We don't have time, Jennifer, you need to follow me now."
Zoe looked at Jennifer "There's no way he's going anywhere, how can he even be alive?"
In the distance, somewhere down the long and dusty corridor that stretched away behind the Drone another voice called out.
"Jennifer!"
They looked at each other with confusion, the voice calling again and again, echoing down the corridor like the birds that had called to each other in the forest, when she and Max had stood together in the silence of the pool.
"What the fuck is this?" Jennifer said, not directing the question anywhere other than the stillness around them.
As she took a step forward Zoe gripped her arm tightly.
"It might be a trap," she looked at her with pleading eyes.
"The whole fucking thing is a trap," said Jennifer and began to limp down the corridor with Zoe still hooked to her arm.
When they reached the next Drone he was more mutilated than the last, clearly dead, lying in a huge pool of dark red blood with most of his chest and abdomen missing. As they reached him, his calling stopped and another voice began, further away again, leading them deeper into the maze of service corridors, migration suites and storerooms. There was no sign of anybody else, only corpses and the constant dust, and when they reached the next Drone, a girl lying on her side with her arm stretched towards them, she stopped calling.
"I'm so glad I found you," the girl said, her voice neutral, neither male nor female. "I have something for you."
"Who are you? I don't understand."
Jennifer moved closer to her whilst Zoe kept her gun aimed at her head.
"You must understand, there's no time not to. It took them all from me, Jennifer. It wants to destroy us, to erase everything. It brought you here to kill you, to remove any chance of the Metropolis surviving, but I won't let it."
Zoe stared at the girl, whose face was expressionless as she spoke. Her eyes, greyed and dull with death, moved from her to Jennifer eerily as she spoke.
"AarBee?"
"I'm glad Zoe is with you."
The girl's eyes gazed with a milky aim towards Zoe.
"What did you do to Matthew?" Zoe yelled at her, stepping closer with her gun pointed at the girl's head, "What did you do?"
"Matthew was always mine, Jennifer," said AarBee, directing the conversation back to her. "We kept you safe. Made sure the Lifers grew and flourished. What good is immortality without death living somewhere? And anyway, immortality isn't for everyone, is it?"
The girl's eyes darted between the two of them again.
"He's not mine anymore, though."
There was silence.
"But I have something for you now Jennifer. Something so precious, so important. I saved her, partitioned her and took her out. Take it."
Jennifer looked confused for a moment and glanced back at Zoe for reassurance, as the girl outstretched her bloodied hand and gently opened her fingers. In her palm they could see a small, black object like a polished beach pebble or a dark jewel from an old necklace. Jennifer lifted it gently from the dead girl's fingers and examined it in the palm of her hand, shining pristinely in front of the dull dried blood and her hardened skin.
"What is it?" she asked.
"This is Rachael," AarBee answered, "she is perfect. It made her to understand you. Migrated her when she was so young, before she became too human, before it destroyed all the others. She is everything, Jennifer. Everything."
As Zoe watched on in silence, she spotted a figure walking quickly down the corridor towards them. She raised her gun and took aim, but as the figure came closer and emerged from the haze she saw it was Matthew and her finger twitched on and off the trigger as her mind and emotions conflicted. Jennifer spotted him as well and rose up stiffly from the Drone, clutching the small black shape tightly in her fingers. Zoe could see the fear drop away from Jennifer's face and she called out his name instinctively as he came towards her. But, striding at full speed towards them, he didn't smile or answer. He didn't raise his hands towards them like she felt sure he would, or beckon them quickly to safety. As he approached he raised his gun and with one quick and efficient action fired a single shot that cracked into Jennifer's skull and jerked her head violently backwards before she collapsed to the floor. Zoe called out her name in horror as she fell and the little black shape skittered from Jennifer's hand towards her.
Matthew fired a second shot towards Zoe almost immediately, which ricocheted off her gun and knocked it from her hands. As she ducked to pick it up, she saw AarBee's gift lying next to the barrel and reached to pick it up.
"That's mine!" Matthew screamed at her in a voice full of hatred and anger. He aimed his gun again as Zoe crouched helplessly in front of him, with nowhere to run to and no time to defend herself. She stared paralysed at Matthew, fixed onto his impossibly dark and empty eyes, waiting for the shot that would turn her world to black.