Before Jonathan watched the latest recording of his past self, he got Natalia to explain how to work the machine. Now he had the image paused before John started talking, so that he could look at himself and speculate about what would come next.
There was nobody watching with him this time. He wanted to be able to analyse what was said on his own first, before he let them know what was going on. He felt that they, as he, held no love for the boy of two years ago and he wanted to protect himself, and his past self, from such an attack as they might give.
The boy's face gave nothing away. He looked much as he had in the last video, though perhaps slightly less calm. Jonathan figured it was maybe a day or two later, perhaps more. The room behind him had changed very slightly, in almost indiscernible ways, marking the passing of time.
"Hello, Jonathan," John said, taking a deep breath. "By now, you must be starting to hate me. Maybe you hate everyone here. I hope you haven't changed too much, though. I hope you're still loyal to the people who matter. I hope you can judge who those people are."
Something about that statement stumped Jonathan. Could he judge who those people were? It had never occurred to him before that his ability to select his loyalties might be in any doubt.
"Subterra matters, John," John said, urgently. "Because it's everything that these people have, that we have. People really care about each other here, even if that's not obvious at first. Go into the sub-dwellings and you'll see. They look out for one another."
Jonathan thought of the tightly-knit groups he'd seen in the mess hall or walking side-by-side down corridors and conceded that John may be right, though he couldn't prove it.
"I expect you'll know the history of this place by now," John continued, "or at least a garbled version of it. Maybe you're starting to get your memories back. They said it could take a week before they began to resurface. I don't know how soon you're going to get this video. You could remember me by now."
Past-John rubbed his nose and paused, almost as though he didn't know how to say what was coming next and was building up to it slowly.
"You need to make sure Edward's ok," John announced. "You need all of them, actually. You need them completely committed to you. In fact, you need to start waking up the youth corps. They'll have been stagnant while you've been sleeping. You need to revive them."
Revive them? Jonathan had no idea what he meant.
"Reawaken the groups," John urged. "Make promotions. Start up council meetings again. Increase the training schedules. Push them. Make them learn things you remember from your dreaming. Don't ask me why, just do it. You're going to need them more alert than they are now."
"I am?" Jonathan asked, forgetting for a moment that the picture-self couldn't reply. "Why? What for?"
"There's a war coming," John said, seriously. "But it's not the war you think it is. Talk to people. Talk to everyone you can find. Everyone knows something else or has heard a different rumour or has their own suspicions. Find out everything you can."
"Why can't you just tell me?" Jonathan exploded. "Tell me what's going on!"
"You have to get them all on your side. Make sure they can't doubt you. Just...hold on for a while longer. It will become clear in the end."
"What will?" Jonathan yelled. "What will become clear?"
But the screen had cut dead and his past self was gone. Clearly, he thought that was all he needed to say. Jonathan disagreed. He had learned nothing more, just received some vague advice that he was half-tempted to ignore.
"I hate you," he told the dark screen. "Can't you give me more than that? We're the same person. Help me!"
But, of course, there was no help. Jonathan heaved himself up with a sigh. It was all he had, for the time being, these garbled words from a boy he didn't remember. He could do worse than to listen to them.
Carmen ducked a punch and spun round behind the girl, all set to kick her legs out from underneath her but her opponent was quicker than that and side-stepped lightly, throwing in another attack. They had been fighting for some time and Carmen's breaths were rough and uneven.
She couldn't deny it; Kaede could fight. The girl smashed a dizzying blow into Carmen's cheek, sending her spinning of balance. Carmen hit the ground, momentarily winded. Kaede moved forward to punch her and Carmen flicked her legs, sending one kick that ripped up from between Kaede's legs to her stomach to her chin, knocking her head backwards.
Kaede stepped back and Carmen was on her feet again, feinting left before darting right to flip Kaede neatly off her feet. But she was blocked again, the girl seeming to read her mind, making every move precise. Somewhere in the background, people were murmuring as they watched, rooting for their favourite.
Carmen got a punch into Kaede's stomach and the girl doubled over. Another blow sent her onto her back and Carmen dropped down, pressing her against the floor. Kaede arched her back and threw all her weight sideways, crossing her knee over Carmen's hips so that she ended up crushing Carmen instead.
Carmen caught her wrist as she went to punch and pulled the girl over her head. Unbalanced, Kaede went easily and Carmen rolled away. They both rose to their feet, taking a moment to catch their breath, keeping their distance.
Kaede moved first. She launched herself at Carmen, ducking low at the last second to wrap her arms around her waist and sweep her legs out from underneath her. It would have been a perfect take-down if Carmen hadn't been ready for it, dodging sideways at the last second and returning the favour, bearing her opponent to the floor.
Elegantly, with a practised air, she twisted Kaede's arm up behind her and mashed her face against the ground, breathing hard, all her weight combined to keep the other girl down. Kaede squirmed and struggled, snarled briefly as Carmen pulled her arm tighter.
"Pax!" Jonathan yelled. "Let her up!"
Carmen released her opponent and stepped back, the adrenalin bleeding out of her muscles and leaving her limp and shaking. Kaede groaned quietly and pulled herself onto her feet, brushing down her clothes. Carmen rubbed her bruised face ruefully, wincing at the tender swelling.
"Get some ice on it," Jonathan advised. "That was a hell of a punch."
"She's good," Carmen said, exhaustedly. "I thought she had me."
"I thought I had you," Kaede admitted. "I haven't been beaten in a long time."
"Happens to the best of us," Carmen held out her hand to shake.
Kaede shook and smiled at her. "You don't fight quite like we're taught here."
"A real life education," Carmen grinned. "I picked up a few tricks on the way."
"Get off the mat," Jonathan said, impatiently. "It's time for the next pair to have a shot."
Carmen made her way off the mat at Kaede's side, heading over to the benches lined along the walls. A pair of boys made their way up to the crash mats in the centre of the room where the sparring bouts were being held. They'd been at this all day, the room crowded with people lining the walls, watching each other's techniques, learning.
Jonathan had come in that morning like a man possessed and ordered an abolishment to all their established routines. Everything was going to start again, from the basics, and hand-to-hand combat was first on the list.
"You surprise me," Kaede admitted, sitting down and dragging the bands from her falling-down hair. "The old Carissa never fought openly."
"The old Carissa is long gone," Carmen grinned. "God, I'm exhausted."
Someone handed her a bottle of water and she drank thirstily, letting out a breath of relief as it soothed her rasping throat. Once she'd finished, she passed it on to Kaede, who finished retying her hair and then began to drink her fill.
"It's going well, isn't it?" Kaede gestured. "I don't know why he's so determined to shake things up but you can see his point. Not everyone's as good as us."
Carmen looked around at the crowds of children and teenagers around the walls – a few hundred at the most – all with their eyes on the ongoing fight, chatting occasionally to their neighbours, laughing and passing drinks like this was some kind of holiday. She felt a surge of déjà vu.
"I've been here before," she said, aloud. "I remember this exactly."
"We used to have tournament days," Kaede confirmed. "It was a bit like this, but much more competitive. It wasn't about training, it was about winning."
"What did the winner get?"
Kaede looked surprised. "There didn't need to be a prize. It was enough to know you had won. But it didn't matter anyway. Edward always won."
"Edward?" Carmen frowned. "Oh, you mean Ebb?"
Kaede nodded. "John would have beaten him, if John took part. But Ebb could take on anyone else and win."
"Not today," Carmen commented, looking over to where Ebb was sitting slumped in a chair looking somehow faded. "He looks like a breath of wind could knock him over."
"They say he's been ill," Kaede excused. "Waking up didn't agree with him."
"It's been fine for the rest of us," Carmen objected. "We've been far healthier than we should have been, after sleeping so long."
She watched Ebb sitting over with a contingent of medics, Sandy amongst them. Something wasn't right about all of this and she felt that secrets were being kept from her. She watched Sandy and another boy exchange a joke and laugh, saw Ebb raise his eyes to them and half-smile, as if he wanted to find it funny but hadn't the energy.
No, she wasn't sure at all about Ebb Jenti, or Edward James as he was known here. He looked like he lived off secrets and shadows. And weak as he seemed, she wouldn't want to fight him.
Ebb was only half paying attention to the fight-training going on. He watched pairs sparring with an un-seeing eye, long since having given upon trying to memorise or mimic their techniques. He let his mind wander, his gaze drifting over the crowds without registering them.
He felt weak and tired but much more on the planet than he had in a long time. He had never been so aware of gravity and walking was something of an effort. He had tripped over his own feet many times on the way to the training hall, caught again and again by medics who didn't say a word in response to his angry silence. The humiliation of it was getting to him. He'd always been able to walk before, when he needed to.
He knew this place so well that it ached inside of him. He knew the smell of it, of polish and sweat and disinfectant. He knew the way the floor squeaked very slightly under your shoes and the sound the mats made when you fell against them. He knew the way the lights were positioned so as to never cast even a glimmer of a shadow. He remembered it all so clearly that he might as well have lived here all his life.
Perhaps he had.
He looked down the lines and faces stood out to him from amongst their groups. He remembered fighting this one, racing that one, locked hand-to-hand with another one. He remembered beating them all, and the way it had felt, and how easy it had been. Somehow he knew that, if his limbs weren't so feeble and so heavy, he would have been able to replicate each victory perfectly.
It confused him not that he remembered this but that the others didn't seem to. Whenever he spoke with Sandy, which was not so often but often enough, he was told that not one of the other sleepers remembered anything about this place, and that Sandy certainly didn't. To them, it was alien. To Ebb, it was just as clear as his old life had been.
Maybe it was because he had less to remember from that life, most of it entangled in dreams and ensnared by strange hallucinations, that what he knew about this one was more obvious. He couldn't recall everything, but he could the instant he saw it, the way he now remembered the tournaments he had won, again and again.
He had other memories of this hall too, layered and layered on top of each other. He couldn't remember ever having memories about a place so numerously. He had never lingered long anywhere, except his drug den and even then his consciousness had often been elsewhere. This was clear and complex, years and years of his own history.
Ebb could remember climbing hand over hand up the wall on the far side with his ankles tied together, using his trapped feet only for balance and relying on his arms for strength. He could remember running laps around and around until his legs burned and his muscles sang in pain and his heart could have burst from his ribcage. He remembered fighting endlessly, shooting, throwing knives, swinging from the rings on the ceiling, hanging from them for endless minutes in order to build the strength in his shoulders.
It was as if he had never left this place in all his years here, as if he'd spent every second of his time training and training. Jonathan was in a lot of his memories too, shouting at him, urging him on, instructing him. Ebb even remembered Jonathan sitting with his arm around him once while Ebb cried. But that made no sense. Ebb never cried.
"Hey, Sandy," he tugged the older boy's sleeve. "Sandy."
"What?" Sandy looked down. "What's up?"
"Do you remember this place?" Ebb asked.
"It feels familiar," Sandy shrugged. "I'm pretty sure I've been somewhere like this before. But that's all."
"I remember it most exactly," Ebb frowned, biting his tongue in thought. "I remember everything."
Sandy looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. "What do you remember?"
"Training. Fighting. Winning. Jonathan."
Sandy quirked an eyebrow. "Jonathan?"
"Yeah. I think we used to train a lot."
"That's right," the boy named Cass interrupted. "You did a lot of training with John. You didn't do much except train."
Ebb gave him a cold blank stare until Cass felt uncomfortable and turned back to his other conversation with a brief, dismissive flick of his hand. Sandy was watching Ebb carefully, as though expecting something that he wasn't quite seeing.
"Hey!" Jonathan jogged over. "You lot want to go next?"
A girl looked round at him in surprise.
"We're medics," she said, in a voice for the hard of thinking. "We don't fight."
"You do," Jonathan said, firmly. "What if you're caught in combat trying to save somebody? How are you going to protect yourselves?"
"We'll fight," Sandy answered for them. "But we'll go last, once everyone else is done. They're not trained to fight like this."
"What about you?" Jonathan asked shrewdly. "You trained to fight?"
Sandy hesitated. "I used to box. And I have a bit of experience with improvised weapons. But nothing like this."
Jonathan nodded. "You can go later in the afternoon. We can start with the basics."
"The basics?" Cass said, doubtfully, as Jonathan hurried away again. "What are the basics?"
"Can you make a fist?" Sandy suggested.
Cass tried and Sandy burst out laughing.
"That's if you want to break your thumbs," Sandy took his hand and began to correct him. "How can you be a soldier and not even know how to throw a punch?"
Cass scowled. "I'm not a soldier. I'm a healer."
Sandy shook his head. "Look, like this..."
Ebb watched him give them lessons, teaching these blue-eyed innocents how to do even the simplest of things. He wasn't exactly listening – he didn't need the instruction – but he paid a lazy attention. It was more interesting than watching two pre-adolescent boys trying to bring each other down on the distant mat.
Sandy turned back to give him a conspiratorial look, one that conveyed both his amusement and his exasperation with these people's inability. It was expressed mostly in eyebrows and Ebb smiled without even thinking.
He realised his mistake when Sandy's eyes widened in surprise and he hastily returned his expression to one of neutral disinterest. But Sandy had seen and he smiled widely in return, a bright, sunny look that made him almost comical. Ebb scowled back but Sandy didn't seem discouraged. He turned away to continue his teaching and Ebb returned his gaze to the distant fight, wondering how long it had been since he had last smiled in this life, or the other.