SECTION VI

Click Here For Section VII

Tribes. The city was based on them now. Little tribes fighting each other. Bigger tribes clashing in virtual civil war - the city was used to it, and so were its young inhabitants. Tribal warfare. Division. Sides. Now it was splitting again.

Tribe Fury were the biggest group. They had their own forces, and a sizeable section of the local populace, too scared to stand against them. They had their weapons, their machinery, their mechanised transport, and their food stores. They had the city, too, but lately it seemed that they did not necessarily have its inhabitants. The long weeks of the occupation were starting to gall, and although the majority of citizens had no intention of risking their lives, liberty and food supplies in standing up to a likely immovable object, enough of them did have exactly that intention. The seeds of dissent had been sown, and they had been spread far and wide. Silver and his men weren't worried by the growth of the resistance, but they were bothered by the nature of it, for whilst ordinary citizens might be permitted to display dissatisfaction with their lot - within very strict limits - dissension amongst the ranks was unacceptable; and yet it had happened. To Silver's lasting disbelief, his own second in command had led a contingent of Furies out into the city, and was collecting civilian support in a stand against the Occupiers. The half-starved Independents were on the surface not much of an enemy, but any group could become a force to be reckoned with when they had the right people behind them. Brigadier Racha was probably anything but the right person to lead the civilians of the city, but he was the right man to lead a rebellion. He was single-minded to the point of obsession, and he had no normal concept of danger or of perspective. Silver's advisors had been trying to warn their Lord Brigadier-General about Racha's instabilities for some time, but only now, when evidence of his treachery was undeniable, did the leader of Tribe Fury choose to listen. Silver believed that all his men loved him, as the people of the city would one day come to do. In his own way he was as blinkered and as obsessive as Racha himself; as unable to accept anything that did not fit into his own world view. Now, shaken to the core, he sat alone in his office at the hotel, theorising over Racha's defection - or, as he believed, brainwashing - whilst wave after wave of his men went out onto the streets, charged with the task of making the resistance pay. They marched out in formation every morning, each unit eager to be the one who found Racha, as well as the people that Silver was convinced had taken him against his will. Meanwhile the Fury leader had rations decreased again and again; had hostages taken and homes ransacked; all in the search for his trusted second in command. His generals could see what he could not, although they didn't dare contradict him to his face; for Racha hadn't been brainwashed by anybody. The resistance was entirely of his own making, and entirely by his own free will, and it made up the forces of the second tribe that now held sway over the city, challenging Tribe Fury, and threatening to bring civil war. The result was the growth of two bands of military brawn, backed by civilian recruits willing and unwilling - and both led by deluded maniacs. It seemed impossible that anything could be made out of it; that any end could come to the conflict at all; or, if it did, that it would be a good one. So long as the city still felt worth fighting for, though, Lex wasn't ready to give up. Which was why he was leading a third group now forming amongst the city's young residents. The smallest group. They had no weapons, save the few that they had had stolen. They had little in the way of spare ammunition, or food stores; no transport save skateboards and roller skates; no heavy artillery. They had war paint, and that was just about all.

Amber had not given much thought to what would happen once her baby was born. The focus had always been merely on keeping it safe until it could be; on making sure that it did not again try to deliver itself prematurely. Mindful of the pain and the fear of that experience in the mountains, she had not dared think too hard of the end of her pregnancy, and the moment when she would be able to hold her baby for the first time. There was too great a risk that that happy day might never come. When it did, and she did indeed hold her baby for the first time, she realised that she was entirely unprepared for it. She had no proper or permanent shelter; little food. She was hiding from Tribe Fury like every other Independent, but there was no telling a hungry child about that, or of the need for silence. The baby cried when it was cold, which was often; when it needed changing, which was even more often; when it needed sleep, which was always a problem. She had no bed for it, and often enough once she had managed to get it settled, she had to snatch it up again to run from approaching threats. Having a baby was perhaps the hardest thing to do within the city, and if she had thought that her life was hard as a pregnant woman on the run, it was harder still as a mother. She didn't have a clue how she was going to cope. KC and Michaels, their young Tribe Fury deserter, had found her supplies for the child almost immediately, with a tale of a bag full of oddities discovered in a pile of rubble. It had been useful stuff, but it only solved a few of their problems. Life with a baby was proving to be very difficult indeed.

They had called him Eden, partly at Sasha's suggestion. He was an endearing enough child, with dark hair like his father's, and a fine supply of his mother's restless energy. Chloe doted on him, Sasha behaved like a devoted uncle, and even the nervous young Michaels relaxed when he was helping to look after him. Such fondnesses didn't solve any problems though. They still struggled to find hideouts where the crying wouldn't be heard in the street; to find material for nappies, or a way to wash what had already been used. With her limited diet Amber struggled to provide enough milk, and there seemed little chance of supplementing what she could produce with anything else. If life had been a struggle before it was doubly so now; and that was without the constant worries about Eden's father. Amber had all but convinced herself now that he was dead, and the best exhortations from the others couldn't change her mind. Even Sasha, who wanted nothing more than to win her hand, did what he knew was right and tried to keep her spirits up, insisting that she shouldn't give up hope without proof; but it had been months now since she had last been with Bray, and weeks since she had seen what she thought was him, caught in the middle of a battle she was sure that none but Tribe Fury could have survived. Had they travelled the more populated areas, instead of keeping so very much to themselves, they might have seen the posters that had been spread so thickly amongst the city's other inhabitants, though it would hardly had made Amber feel any better if they had. The posters, which had announced the approaching execution of Ebony and Bray, had not been withdrawn or updated following their escape, and if Amber had known about them any hope that might still have lingered in her heart would only have been destroyed. Instead she merely believed that he was dead because it was better to do so than to let herself hope he was alive, and risk the extra pain of one day discovering her hopes dashed. None of the others could raise her spirits in the slightest, so far as this matter was concerned, and at nights, holding little Eden as he slept, she cried to herself about the father of her child, and sighed out her sorrows for the family that would now never be. Only Sasha could drag her from her sadnesses now - and it was Sasha that she saw as the only possible father for Eden. Her past, so far as she could see it, was gone forever.

With a crack that made Bray's head sing, a bullet smacked into the stone just above him, and he ducked automatically. Dust showered down on him, filling his hair with flakes of stone. Somebody nearby fired back at the sniper, but they were used by now to most of their bullets being wasted. Everybody was positioned too well in the half-ruined buildings, and it was all too easy for a confrontation to become an empty stand-off. They would stand in their shelters and shoot blindly at each other for a few hours, before one or the other side slunk off, preferably without being noticed. Bray wasn't certain how clashes like this were going to win them back the city, but there seemed to be little else to do. When all was said and done, he preferred stand-offs to real battles. It was always better to know that nobody was dying, even if that fact meant that they were making no real progress.

"Taking the air?" Ebony appeared at his shoulder as though by magic, but he didn't jump. Not this time. She was always doing that; always appearing beside him without warning, or melting out of the shadows when she thought he was alone. She liked to think of herself as his partner in all things; his back up; his rear guard. Given that she was generally carrying a gun, she was reasonably useful to have around, he supposed; especially since he preferred to go unarmed himself. He didn't want to shoot anybody; that was for others. Racha, Archer, and the other breakaway Furies, and the civilians they had gathered together to help them. That Bray had gathered together, to be more precise, for that was his real job, and what Racha had always wanted him for - giving stirring speeches and convincing the locals that the fight was possible, and worthwhile. He didn't tell Racha of the stories that he heard from some of those locals - of Lex and a band of followers making the same kind of recruitment drive, setting themselves up to fight the enemy. He told only Ebony, Ryan and Salene about that. If together they helped to make Racha win this war, after all, the general lot of the city dwellers would not improve. Swapping Silver for Racha was hardly ideal. There was a chance that Lex, and whoever he had following him, could provide an alternative to the unhinged Brigadier, and with that in mind it was vital to keep their work as quiet as possible. Bray longed to get in touch with Lex; to help him with his battle, instead of being stuck with this one; but he knew that that was impossible. He only wished that he could do something to help Lex's operation along.

"Bray?" Ebony was clearly feeling ignored. He shot her a sidelong glance.

"What?"

"Penny for them? People are shooting at you, you know. It usually makes sense to pay attention when that's happening."

"They never hit anything." He rubbed the stone dust from his hair. "Sorry. I was miles away."

"Dreaming of Amber again I suppose."

"No." He looked awkward at the admission, as though he felt he was betraying Amber in some way by not thinking of her all of the time. "Lex actually."

"You were dreaming of Lex? You really are feeling lonely."

"You know what I mean. I was thinking about him. What he's up to."

"His suicide mission? Stop with the doe-eyed look, for goodness sakes. He's going to wind up caught in the middle of Racha's lot and Silver's. He doesn't stand a chance. He has half our man power, and none of our firepower. He's already dead."

"Not if we can get him some weapons he isn't."

"We'd never get them away from the stores." Her eyes narrowed. "You're thinking about the ones that Ryan talked about, aren't you. The ones that the adults hid, for their child armies to use against the rest of us. Bray, Tribe Fury are a child army. What makes you think they don't know about that lot already?"

"They might, they might not. They were regular army cadets, not the kind of force Lex and Ryan and the rest of their lot were set up as. And anyway - only the adults knew where those arms were hidden. Tribe Fury might know about them the same as we do - but it doesn't mean that they know where they are. They've never needed to look, for starters. They have all the weapons they need and more besides."

"You said it. More besides. Say Lex does find some hidden cache of - what - a dozen rifles? How's that going to help him? Or us? With the way things are going lately, Lex would walk straight into battle, with his handful of supporters and practically sod all weaponry, and the only people he'd manage to kill before being taken out would be us. Give it up. Concentrate on this fight. That's the way to stay alive."

"I don't want just to stay alive. I want the city back as it was, and I want Amber safe. You might be able just to keep your head down, Ebony, but some of us have more responsibilities than that." He scowled around at their broken stone shelter. "I thought we'd finished with all this. Hiding like rats. But there's always something else, isn't there."

"A Chosen? A Tribe Fury? Probably, yes. This is a world of chaos, Bray - and chaos breeds chaos. We're a long way away from a quiet, well ordered existence, the way it was before the Virus. It took the adults hundreds of years to get that far."

"You're just full of reassurances today, aren't you."

"Hey, I tell it like I see it. Want to build a new world? Then let go of the old one. Stop trying to get back what you've lost, and look for what you can have instead." She leant against the wall, and rested her gun beside her. Whoever their unseen assailants had been, they had apparently gone now - yet another pointless skirmish amounting to nothing.

"You're really serious about Lex being a contender, are you?" she asked, after several moments trying to work out how she felt about that herself. Bray nodded.

"He's under-manned, yes - but if we win this we've still got Racha to get rid of. If Lex could win..."

"If Lex could fight off the whole of Tribe Fury, in a war on two fronts? You do realise how unlikely that is?"

"When we tried to make a stand we didn't have enough people, and we let ourselves get manoeuvred into losing them all in one stupid battle. Lex is headstrong, but he's not crazy. He knows how to fight a battle and win."

"So do I." She looked insulted, and he nodded.

"Sure - but that was different. You didn't have as many people as he does, and you didn't have inside men to help out. Ebony, we can help Lex. We can work for him, while we're looking like we're working for Racha. I've been thinking about it. His problem is manpower, right? Well he's not going to get many more people himself, but we've got a fair few. Why can't we pass them on to him? Racha has me out there spouting his garbage about fighting for a free city - well if I can get people to do what Racha wants, why can't I get them to work for Lex instead? We'd have to choose them carefully. Some of them are so scared they'd go rushing straight to Racha to tell him what we're doing. We've got a lot of people on board that I think we can trust though. People who only joined because they didn't think they had any other choice."

"And Lex is another choice?! If they thought he was they'd have already joined him."

"But with them, and a few more weapons, he could really be another choice! Ebony, all it takes is manpower. If we can get that for Racha, we can get it for Lex. You know we can."

"Maybe." She lifted her gun up again. "But you're talking treachery, Bray. Racha likes you, but if he thinks you're becoming a danger to him, he'll kill you without a second thought. He can afford to kill quite a few of us before he's putting himself in danger of losing too many men."

"I know." He looked away, suddenly seeming very tired, and she reached out to put a hand on his shoulder.

"You been sleeping lately?"

"Sleeping? Racha won't let me sleep. Besides, there's too much to think about."

"Burning yourself out won't help anybody."

"I know." He offered her one of his warm smiles, the kind that they had shared in the old days, before the Virus and the Locos and Amber. Days she didn't want to miss. "Sometimes I just..." He shrugged, and left the sentence unfinished. "See you later. Try not to get shot."

"No bullet would dare hit me." She smiled at him, but he was already walking away by then, back turned to her attempts to make him unwind. Damn it, just when had he got so complicated? It had all been so easy in the past - even after the Virus had come she had always known exactly what to say to him and when; exactly how to get whatever reaction she had most desired. Even on opposite sides they had never failed to connect in some way. Now? Now he was aloof half of the time and confused the rest; a largely uncommunicative automaton, stuck in a situation he despised. Ebony only hoped that his constant detachment didn't prove to be dangerous - in a world where everybody was fighting each other, and he was a well known face, there were risks on every street and in every building. And with so many guns, the risks were greater than before. Watching him until he had vanished into the rubble, she rested her rifle on her shoulder, then turned to head off the other way. So much for their closeness during their time as prisoners of Tribe Fury. Right now all Bray seemed close to were his own unwieldy dreams. Lately she wasn't even sure that he was thinking of Amber. It was almost as if he was beginning to self-destruct.

Although, she mused, with only a bare flicker of amusement, maybe that wouldn't be so bad. After all, it wasn't as though Amber was around to be the one to pick up the pieces.

Amber woke up, as she always did, to stiffness, thirst, and the sound of the baby crying. She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. An old wine cellar had been their shelter this time; a large, cool, underground room beneath a restaurant. They had found a store of tablecloths, and used them to make beds of a sort, behind a rack of dusty bottles of wine that had probably been worth a great deal once; and which would soon, inevitably, be found and drunk by one gang or another. She might have thought it a waste, had she had an interest in alcohol herself, but she didn't, and thought of it only as potential fuel.

"Sleep well?" Sasha was beside her as always, lying just the other side of Eden. The baby lay between them, the safest place they could think of.

"As well as ever." She rubbed her eyes and sat up, looking down at her restless son. "I better feed him. Can you find something to use as a nappy? I think we're out again."

"Sure. I'll cut up some of these tablecloths. Might as well make good use of them." He pulled out his penknife. "He needs a bath. You're supposed to bath them every day."

"I don't think whoever decided that lived like we do." She picked the baby up, and rocked him gently. "Where are the others?"

"I don't know. They were gone when I woke up. Out foraging probably."

"KC and Chloe have become so self-reliant. It's amazing. I always knew KC was pretty tough, or could be, but Chloe has been a quite a revelation recently."

"We all do what we have to." Sasha got up and began collecting tablecloths, setting about the task of cutting them up for their new rôle. "In a few years they might be taking Eden with them."

"I know." She cradled the boy gently in her arms. "If things don't change he could be out there with a gun, or fighting over scraps of food in the street. Anything. But that's tomorrow I guess."

"And anything can happen before tomorrow, right?"

"I don't know." She dredged up a smile, then turned her attention to feeding her son. Sasha took the hint. Sometimes the last thing any of them wanted to think about was tomorrow.

KC and his little band of scavengers returned half an hour later, to the oddly domestic scene of Sasha and Amber arguing over how best to burp the baby. The wine cellar smelt of milk and dust, a peculiar combination with the scent of old spilt alcohol. KC wrinkled up his noise.

"I used to miss milk. Now I'm not so sure."

"There are worse smells to come back to," muttered Michaels wryly. KC nodded.

"Lately, yeah." He threw himself down onto the floor, watching disinterestedly as Sasha returned to cutting up tablecloths. "We found something. Not much though."

"Here." Chloe stepped forward, bearing a packet of dried apricots and a tin of corned beef. "Found them in some rubble. Half buried."

"Chloe! I've told you before about the rubble. You're not to go climbing around in all of that. It just needs for you to knock one stone out of place and you could bring half a building down on top of you." Amber sighed in frustration. Chloe had always done as she was told in the past, but she was so blastedly independent these days. Being stuck inside so much of the time caring for a baby didn't make Amber feel any better placed to reassert her authority, either. She laid Eden down on the ground, and managed to smile. "Well done. Every little helps. But please go easy on the risks."

"If we don't take risks we don't eat." KC edged away slightly when he saw Amber making moves towards changing the baby's nappy. "The less food there is, the bigger risks we have to take."

"Sounds so brave, doesn't he," joked Sasha, "But point a baby's nappy at him and he crumbles."

"I don't see you getting any closer," growled KC. He took a drink from their ever present bottle of water. "What are we going to do today?"

"Do? Has something changed overnight that I'm not aware of?" Wishing for wet wipes and cream, Amber did her best to clean Eden up. "We have a baby to think about, KC. We stay out of sight, and we keep looking for somewhere where we can set up a permanent home. What else?"

"I don't know." KC lowered his eyes, looking unhappy. "I just thought--"

"You want to fight, hard luck." Amber fixed him with a bright stare. "I need you here, KC. Sasha and I can't forage and look after Eden. We need the three of you. I'm sorry."

"We don't all want to fight." Michaels set to work helping Sasha, an intense look on his face. "I want to help you."

"And it's appreciated." Amber offered the boy a smile, but he wasn't looking at her. In the short time since they had found him, he had relaxed a lot, even joking and teasing on occasions; but for the most part he still seemed closed up inside. KC scowled at him.

"I just want to do something more interesting than hiding in buildings, that's all."

"You always want to do something more interesting," Chloe reminded him. "You always want to fight somebody, or join up with somebody, and try to be all heroic. It's like you think it's all a game, but it really isn't." She watched Amber with the baby and smiled childishly, as ever not needing much to rub away the veneer of her maturity. Amber finished changing Eden, and handed him over to her.

"We should think about moving on," she said, trying to sound decisive. "See how far we can get before the fighting starts up again."

"I don't think it's stopped." Michaels had the haunted look in his eyes that talk of fighting always gave him. "There was the usual night fighting of course, But they haven't really let up since."

"None of them wanting their breakfast this morning?" Sasha could rarely find a reason not to joke about something, but Michaels didn't generally appreciate his sense of humour. The boy was a pet project of Sasha's now, and the only thing that could distract him from Amber and Eden. Cheering people up was more than just a livelihood for him. It was almost his life's work.

"Whatever reason it is that usually makes them pack up the fighting at dawn," continued Michaels, with a sudden sharpness in his tone, "doesn't seem to have stopped them today. Not that they're doing much. There haven't been any pitched battles in days."

"Looked to me like it was Tribe Fury just shooting at each other, anyway." KC shrugged at the look he got in reply. "Well it did. I've heard rumours, you know. People saying that it's not so much about the resistance fighting back any more. There are whispers about Lex, but do you think he could get enough people and guns to have started up a constant battle out there? Lex can do just about anything, but nobody could do that so quickly. Not with Tribe Fury being so powerful."

"Fair point," offered Sasha. KC nodded.

"But I've heard talk that Tribe Fury have split, and that's why all this fighting is going on. A breakaway group leading a rebellion against the main army. Could be good news, couldn't it? I mean, if Tribe Fury are fighting among themselves, maybe they're on the way out."

"Good news? You think this could be good news?" Amber looked horror-struck. "KC, if Tribe Fury have split it could be a disaster! Two armies to worry about, instead of just one. Twice the chance of getting shot or captured out there. It'll be harder to find food, harder to find somewhere to shelter. The main army will crack down in response, there'll be less freedom. And then what? Whichever side wins will be ready to crack down on everything. And I mean everything. You think it's a military dictatorship now? You wait and see what it's like being governed by some army fresh from winning a war." She looked towards Sasha. "Tell me I'm over-reacting. Please."

"I don't know that you are." He went over to sit beside her and take her hand. "This doesn't sound good. If I thought there was a chance that these two factions of Tribe Fury would wipe each other out in time, I might be more behind it, but as it is I don't think we stand to gain anything from this. How can we?"

"You're too pessimistic." Even as he said it KC knew that he was being unfair. Pessimism, after all, but not really a charge that could ever be levelled against Sasha. "I thought--"

"It doesn't matter what you thought." Amber stood up, and began packing the sliced tablecloths into the nearest bag. Sasha would want to carry it, she knew, no matter how often she insisted that she could manage. Sasha was just about the only part of her life right now that she felt she could truly rely on, but she didn't want to rely on him too much. She took back Eden from Chloe, and headed to the door. "We have to find somewhere more secure than this," she said, in a voice that shook a little. She was so tired. So very, very tired. Why did life always get so complicated? So dangerous. So exhausting. So difficult. And why did it never seem to get any better? She cradled Eden in her arms, and thought about the life that she was setting him up for. Hard nights, little food, frightened days. Sasha would do his best as a stand-in father, and she knew that they would both always be able to lean on him - but that didn't make them any less hungry, or cold, or scared. It wouldn't make Eden any safer from hypothermia, or shrapnel, or stray bullets. All it really did was make her that little bit less lonely. She wasn't sure quite when her attitudes had changed so much; quite when she had ceased to be content with her lot. Had everything really changed so much in the short hours of her labour, or the moment when Sasha had handed Eden to her for the first time? Or had it been the days since, when she had felt her feelings for the baby grow almost by the hour? So much responsibility. Never before had she missed the guidance of the adults so very much.

Lex had started to have misgivings. Finding the Badlanders had been good - good for his ego, good for his image - hopefully good for the city. Their tours around various dilapidated tribal headquarters had generally been positive; they had wound up with more people on their side than he had ever dared to expect. The reunion with Tai-San had been wonderful, and he certainly slept much better with her beside him, which was good for his mental well-being. It was just that lately the 'goods' were becoming seriously outweighed by the 'bads'. Seriously enough for Lex to notice - which on the whole meant very serious indeed.

First there was the gun problem. They had one for about every ten people, which was quite a shortfall. Then there were the people themselves - compared to Tribe Fury they had hardly anybody at all. Not that numbers usually bothered Lex; it was just that, when so many of his people were skinny and wasted, and didn't look strong enough to lift the guns that they didn't have anyway... Well it didn't bode well, that was all.

Then there was the civil war. Not that it wasn't gratifying to see your enemy fighting amongst themselves. Killing each other; distracting each other; tying up large numbers of each other's forces in gun battles, and in the process leaving large sections of the city unpatrolled. Every little helped. Both sides were dragging in civilians to help them though, and that meant less civilians available to help Lex. Or willing to risk throwing in their lot with him, anyway, since after his promising start none of them really seemed to think that he had a chance now. Lex maintained that being under-manned, under-armed and underfed whilst fighting one big army was just the same as being in the same situation whilst fighting two smaller armies, but a lot of people disagreed with him. They even quoted history at him, and spoke about 'fighting a war on two fronts', which just annoyed him. What did he know, or care, about history? All he knew about was fighting, and he was going to do that no matter how many people he had on his side, or what they were fighting with, or who they were fighting against. It was all the same to him. Apparently, though, there were very few others who felt the same.

Tai-San was alright. She had her doubts, but she followed where fate led her, and right now that meant being where she was, and doing what seemed to need to be done. She didn't care about fighting wars on two fronts; not if there were two fronts that needed fighting on. She had made a brief speech about going with the flow, and being at one with events, which Lex couldn't claim to have followed too well. He was just grateful for her support.

Pride seemed to be cool about it too, at least as far as Lex could see. He didn't want to be in the city of course - they all knew that - and he really no longer thought of it as being his fight; but he was in the middle of it, and he would carry on being so, for as long as he felt needed, and for as long as escaping the city seemed impossible. Lex was glad to have him. There were few fighters better than Pride, and few with such good heads on their shoulders. Pride might not say much, but what he did say was always worth hearing.

Jack and Trudy were less helpful, but Jack was working hard to come up with some invention that might be of use. Already he had been able to expand upon his water purification system to help supply clean water to their allies, and his method of recharging batteries allowed them torches and personal radios. The latter were mostly courtesy of him too, carefully adapted from stolen Fury radios, and set to use a frequency that he was more or less certain that the Furies wouldn't intercept. There weren't many of them, but it was a start. Trudy was helping in her own way too, setting up a crèche for the handful of small children belonging to their various allies. They spent all day squabbling together in a hastily furnished playroom at the Mall; a place of rugs, cushions and pillows, and the few toys from the Mall's toy shop that had escaped destruction during the various raids that the building had seen. Lex supposed it was being useful; more or less.

Luke was the really useful one. With his bright blue hair he was hardly well camouflaged, but he had a natural ability to be quiet that seemed to enable him to sneak up on anyone. He was responsible for stealing most of the guns and radios, and had even managed to get a couple of uniforms from somewhere. He roamed the streets on a pair of hugely gaudy roller blades that looked like they might once have belonged to a disco queen, overhearing this, filching that, and generally being downright sneaky. He wasn't up to much when it came to actual fighting, although he wasn't a bad shot; but Lex was willing to forgive his aversion to violence when he was managing to sneak hand grenades from out of the hotel cellar without being seen. All in all the various members of the Mall Rats were acquitting themselves particularly well. It was just a shame that none of it seemed to be doing any good.

"Morning." Pride sounded tired, but then he had been on guard all night, and there had been one hell of a day before that. Lex nodded a greeting at him.

"Quiet night?"

"Two patrols went by. One just after it went totally dark, and one just as it was starting to get light. Usual stuff. They didn't take any interest in this place."

"No reason to. They've checked and double-checked this whole area. Besides, we're pretty well camouflaged." Lex handed over a bottle of water and an opened can of baked beans with a fork sticking out of it. "Here. Breakfast."

"Inspiring." Pride took the basic meal, and sat down on a piece of half-tumbled wall. "What's the plan for today?"

"Jack wants to build another water purification whatsit. We could do with another. I'm sending out a team to get some bits and pieces for that. Luke's out hunting for spent cartridges. He thinks between them he and Jack can find a way to make them fire as blanks. Might be a handy way of getting some target practice. Other than that it's business as usual."

"Oh good. Hiding is always such a worthwhile way to spend the day." Pride finished the tin of beans without relish. "I know. We're not ready. Believe it or not I don't really want to be. I just... I want to be doing something. We can sabotage all the cars, and plant all the home-made explosives, that we like. It doesn't make anybody take us seriously."

"I know." Lex shrugged lightly, thinking of his own dreams of glory, on and off the battlefield. Marching at the head of a victorious army, Tribe Fury cowering in defeat, the grateful city ready to declare him their leader. Youngsters gazing at him with the sort of fascinated adoration that KC had always shown towards him. Parades with he and Tai-San watching from on high, waving to the assembled masses... He smiled dreamily, then cast the thought aside. They were doing some good, he knew that. They had even destroyed a tank a few days before. It was just that it was all so slow. So laborious. Not at all the stuff of legend, so far as he could tell. Pride stood up.

"I'm off for some sleep," he announced, sounding as if he might keel over where he stood if he waited much longer. "If the war actually bothers to start - wake me."

"Yeah." Lex slapped him on the back as he passed, then watched him disappear inside. They were using an old warehouse for their battle headquarters, in order to keep the Mall as safe as possible for the children, and he didn't feel at home here. It was a bleak building, increasingly filled by people that he didn't really know; more a halfway house than anything else. The Badlanders had chosen it, the way that they had done so much of the behind the scenes work for all of this. They were still all smiles and encouragement; still talking about making stands and fighting back, and making everything count for something, but he found it all a bit hollow now. Maybe it was the relative inactivity, but his mind seemed more inclined to suspicion now, which was making him wonder just how far he trusted the Badlanders. They had appeared too quickly, too conveniently; had used him all too readily. They were out there somewhere now, doing whatever it was that they did when he wasn't with them, using the famous name of the Mall Rats to win them assistance here and there, returning with food stores to distribute amongst the populace. They did that with a smile, with a kind word, with an advert for their work with the Mall Rats. They collected up the smallest children of the Independents, for safekeeping under Trudy's eyes in the Mall. They were doing their bit, he supposed, in lieu of anything better. What they needed - what they all needed - was for something to happen. Something to get a few balls rolling, and turn this false war into a real one. Then, perhaps, he could start to feel good about all of this; and maybe get to play the role of hero once again. Shouldering his rifle he set off after Pride. Tai-San was inside the warehouse, and she at least could always cheer him up. He felt in need of cheering; of Tai-San's special brand of warmth and care and encouragement. He decided not to tell her that what he really wanted was a fight. Knowing her she would take that far too literally, and she was definitely not the one he wanted to fight; even just in practice. What he wanted from Tai-San was a different kind of contact altogether. And if nothing else, the thought of that was enough to start cheering him up.

It wasn't just Lex and Pride who wanted the stand-off to escalate. It wasn't just the Furies exchanging random bullets who wanted a proper fight. There were other players in the city; others who hoped that there was something to be gained from the struggle. They wanted war because it suited their own plans, regardless of anything else. Regardless of the others in the city, and the dangers, and the virtual certainty that civil war would not make anything better. All they cared about was their own agenda.

Which was why, in the early hours of the morning, whilst Pride was wandering off to bed after eating his cold tin of beans, a shadowy figure was creeping out of one of the many subterranean tunnels, towards the building that housed the hotel's electricity generator. It was old, long abandoned in the days of the adults, but recently returned to duty by Tribe Fury. Lovingly rebuilt, cleaned and oiled in an operation that would likely have made Jack green with envy, it was a cumbersome piece of machinery, and petrol driven. None but Tribe Fury would have been able to keep it going. None but Tribe Fury would have tried.

It was a well guarded building, but Tribe Fury didn't know about the tunnels. The guards didn't see the figure appearing apparently from nowhere, and melting into the early morning darkness of the building's unguarded side. Didn't see him bend and hide something in the long grass that pushed up through the breaking concrete of the ground. He paused for a moment, listening to the voices of the guards at either end of the building, then vanished back into the tunnels as though he had never been there. When the building exploded several minutes later, taking the generator, a sizeable store of petrol, and half a dozen guards with it, the blast was so huge that half of the city saw it. But none of them saw the white-robed blond scurrying away into the darkness that lay beneath their feet.

Bray was standing outside watching the dawn arrive, and trying to hide from Racha, when the bomb went off. He was too far away to feel the ground shake, but he heard the explosion, several seconds after he saw a massive blossoming of flame rise up above the buildings. Black smoke billowed out in every direction, and he saw the chunks of stone thrown up by the force of the blast. He gaped.

"What the hell...?" Some passing civilian - another nameless face, presumably recruited into this madness by Bray himself - stopped to gaze up at the column of smoke and flame. "Where is that?"

"Hotel." Bray left him standing, himself running back into their HQ. He almost collided with Ryan, who was on his way out.

"I thought I heard an explosion?" Ryan's eyes swivelled towards the flame, just now beginning to die down in favour of the spreading smoke. "What's going on?"

"Something's going down at the hotel." Bray raised his voice to call further into the building. "Who's out on patrol by the hotel?"

"Huh?" Archer, Racha's terminal hard-case of a second in command, stuck his head through a nearby doorway. "Hotel?"

"Are you deaf? It sounds like World War Three out there!" Bray pointed back out of the door. "The hotel. Who's out there today?"

"We're not all able to waste our time sitting around outside with our heads in the clouds you know." Archer pushed past Bray and Ryan, looking over towards the scene of the commotion. "Must have been a big blast to show up this far off. You sure it's the hotel?"

"I know this city." Bray looked back towards Ryan. "Hotel, right?"

"Right. Not just a bomb though. There's something else in there." Ryan's eyes narrowed. "Like petrol. That electricity generator?"

"That'll be it, yes." Bray whistled. "That'll put the cat among the pigeons."

"Silver'll be furious." A thin and unpleasant smile took over Archer's face. "It's not down to us though. We don't have anybody near the hotel today. Not officially, anyway."

"Nobody else has explosives - and that can't have been an accident. Can it?" Ryan knew about explosions, but he didn't know a great deal about electricity generators. Bray shook his head.

"No, I don't think so. I can't see the Furies caring even if it was. We better double the guard."

"No need. They don't know where we are." Archer was grinning broadly now. "Bloody hell. This is going to wind them up no end. Looks like the false war is over."

"You think?" Ryan wasn't entirely sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but he did know that fighting was something at which he was very good indeed; and it was nice to put such skills to good use. Archer went back into the building, and emerged again a second later with a hefty rifle slung over one shoulder.

"Yeah, I think," he said, in belated answer to Ryan. "We've been playing at this long enough, and everybody's been looking for a way to make things escalate." He looked towards Bray, with a certain measure of disgust. "Or most of us have, anyway. We just couldn't seem to make it happen. Now? Fun time. Grab a gun each. Get out on the streets."

"Sure." Ryan hurried off to do his bidding, more eager than he had thought he would be. Bray didn't move.

"Tribe Fury are going to be angry as hell," he pointed out. "There's going to be no more stand-offs. No more shooting at each other as you hide in the rubble."

Archer nodded. "That's just what I've been saying. Escalation. When I find out who blew up that generator, I'm going to start handing out medals. We're going to war, Bray. For real this time. So grab a gun."

"I don't think so." Bray could no longer take his eyes from the fading sight of the explosion. "You can't go out there anticipating a fight. You'll only make matters worse."

"Worse? Or better? Bray, once Silver and his lot realise what just happened, they're going to come blasting their way through the streets looking for us. Hell, we should have thought to do this earlier. So don't tell me not to go out there anticipating a fight. No need to anticipate. Not anymore." He grinned hugely. "Think about it. Then grab a gun, and come on out. You never know - you might find you enjoy it."

"Not any time soon. Not on your say so." Bray turned and left, striding away across the weeds and cracked tarmac, in search of some hidden place amongst the buildings. He needed to think, or thought that he did. In truth there was little to think about. He had always known that this would happen. You couldn't hope to split Tribe Fury into two opposing factions without all out war being the result in the end. It was just that it had been taking so long to happen, he had begun to think that they might be forever reduced to pointless exchanges of gunfire. Not that it would accomplish anything if they were. At least with a war there would eventually be a winner. At least with a war things would be moving again. At least with a war... But he couldn't feel positive about it. This might be what he had always known would happen, but that didn't mean that he had to be happy about it. He had fought many wars since the end of the old world. Street wars, gang wars, civil wars - from the small scale skirmishes of early territorial divisions, to the full scale battles between the Locos and the Demon Dogs that had laid waste to so much of the sector he had tried to call home. None of them ever really seemed to accomplish anything, except more rubble, more burnt out buildings. More dead bodies to be cleared away by somebody, before diseases could begin to spread. He didn't want another war, no matter how much he wanted to be rid of Tribe Fury. He didn't want any more death.

"Penny for them?" It was the same question that Ebony had asked him the previous day, but this time it came from a voice with none of Ebony's genuine care and interest. Bray didn't look up. The last thing he wanted to have to deal with right now was another head to head with Racha. He knew from experience that the rebel leader wouldn't take silence as a deterrent though. Sure enough, sharp footsteps clicked closer.

"I could almost believe that you didn't want to talk to me, Bray." A hint of flirtation, as always. A hint of warning, as usual. "I've sounded the alert. Even your friend Salene is standing out front with a gun in her hand. Is there some reason why you're not with her?"

"More sense?" Bray looked up, the sight of the sparkling black eyes just about enough to turn his stomach. Racha smiled at him.

"More sense than what? More sense than to want an end to all of this? You really want this fight to go on forever?"

"You know what I want." Bray looked away, finding a wall of faintly lewd graffiti infinitely more enjoyable a sight than Racha. "It doesn't involve shooting people."

"It might have to." Racha reached out, dropping his hands lightly onto Bray's shoulders, and laughing gently at the way the shoulders tensed in response. "Get a gun, Bray. Stand to with the others. That's an order. I don't know who decided to get this ball rolling again, but whoever it was has started something I don't plan to miss out on. Silver is going to bring my colleagues out against me, and I'm going to have everybody who can hold a gun out there ready to meet the assault. Everybody. You can sit here and mope when Silver is dead."

"And you're ruler of the city?" Bray's voice dripped with bitterness, but Racha, as ever, responded as though he had been given a charming compliment.

"We'll celebrate that day when we get to it. But unless you'd rather the city went to Silver, with him building himself a palace on top of the bodies of most of the people you know, you'll get in line with the others. Who knows? If I think you're behaving yourself, I might even give you and your friends guns that are actually loaded."

"If there's any justice in the world, you'll be the first casualty of this war." Bray pulled away from the pressing hands, and started off back to headquarters. Racha laughed at him.

"There's no justice in this world, Bray. Nothing except what you write yourself. I'll show you one day, when the city's mine. You can watch me create a new kind of justice."

"No thanks." Bray quickened his step, though he knew that it wouldn't be enough to lose him his grinning shadow. Sure enough, he heard the gentle laughter all the way back to the others. If there's any justice in the world... he thought again, but he had no more faith in such justice this time than he had had that brief moment before. Racha was right; there was no justice; not anymore. If it had ever existed at all, it had died with the last of the adults. Just like everything else.

After the electricity generator exploded, it did not take long before the rest of the city followed suit. Tribe Fury were furious, and just as Archer had predicted, they didn't care who was responsible - they assumed that their former cohorts had done it, and acted accordingly. Gone was the half-hearted fighting between former comrades who did not really want to hurt each other; instead everything very quickly went mad. There were no more lethargic exchanges of bullets during pointless stand-offs. No more shouting instead of shooting. The breakaway gang found out the hard way about the change of heart, when a pair of guards found themselves under attack, not with sniper bullets fired over their heads, but with a fire bomb that nearly set them both alight. After that it was a bloodthirsty free-for-all, and it got worse by the day

Ryan seemed to be enjoying himself, though Salene had her doubts when she lay beside him at night, and heard him muttering as he slept. In the end the fighting got to be so heavy that they no longer took such breaks for sleep, and instead caught what they could at their posts; but in those first few skirmishes she worried for him at night. Later she had to worry all the time, and that kept her awake even when the gunfire did not. Their enemy seemed to have an almost inexhaustible supply of grenades, too, and the sound of explosions, of various sizes, was another deterrent for sleep. The air soon filled with dust, walls weakened and became unsafe; the ground cracked and shook. There were firebombs as well, appearing almost out of nowhere without warning, exploding in a rush of flame that ate anything in its path. Bray turned his energies to fire-fighting, rather than fighting for real, and it was almost a full time job. Running here and there armed with buckets of sand, singed by the heat and often choking on the smoke and the up-flung debris. It was a terrible job, but it was better than shooting at people, at least as far as he could see. Shooting at anonymous targets, never knowing whether you were killing or maiming; never knowing who you were killing or maiming. It wasn't for him, although Racha and Archer never ceased to try to get him involved. Always handing him guns, trying to egg him on. Salene they left alone, and she was thankful for it, trying to keep out of everybody's way. As for Ebony, she didn't seem to care one way or the other. She would fire if necessary, or avoid it if she felt like it; moving about from choice position in the front ranks to fairly safe niches at the back of the troops; alternately giving it her all and determinedly looking after herself. She was a good shot, but as ever she had her own agenda. It was if the war was something she wanted a part of only when she felt in need of the entertainment., and the rest of the time she was happy to let it carry on without her.

They saw each other less often now that everything had gone so mad. Ryan always seemed to be where the fighting was at its thickest; Ebony was often positioned likewise, when she wasn't trying to drape herself over Bray, or amuse herself by flirting with the almost pathologically disinterested Archer. Salene was usually at the rear, trying to administer some kind of first aid when she was allowed to; more often just trying not to see what was going on. She wasn't alone in that. There were plenty of them who had never imagined just how fierce and bloody a fight could be; who had seen fighting in the days of the Locos, and the Chosen, but usually only with sticks and fists. Most of them had never seen a war involving guns before; involving bombs and fires, that killed without warning. It was all so messy. So noisy and brutal. And when the tanks rolled in; then it all got crazier still.

They were all together one day, on perhaps the third day, or the fourth, since the attack on the electricity generator. Nobody was sure how much time had passed anymore; not really. There was still night and day to mark the passage of time of course, but nobody was paying much attention to them. There were fewer and fewer breaks for food, fewer and fewer breaks for sleep. Nothing had any regularity anymore; there was no way of keeping time. Everything was just a rush of noise and chaos. Bray was standing watch with a pair of binoculars, looking out for tanks and incoming firebombs, Ryan was doing his best to pick off the snipers who were trying sporadically to pick off them, and Salene just wanted to be as close to him as she could. She had been given a gun, but she preferred not to use it. Salene was no coward, but neither was she a killer, and that was something that she was hoping would never change.

"Quite a turn up for the books, isn't it." Sprawled on the ground, where she was trying to get some rest, Ebony watched the distant sight of tracer fire. "And you lot used to think you were bringing peace to this city."

"We nearly did," Ryan told her. She nodded.

"Yeah. I just think that the city had other ideas." A new volley of bullets from somewhere took a sizeable chunk out of a wall close to her head, and she moved aside without obvious alarm. "I didn't know there were this many bullets in the world."

"At least nobody's making any more," commented Bray. Ebony smiled.

"You hope. Any sign of more tanks?"

"No. I think they've pulled back. They're probably using them to keep the streets clear."

"Good. We had enough to worry about without more tank attacks." Salene still worried that their enemy might be intending to use aircraft against them, and her eyes kept drifting to the skies, in search of planes and helicopters. An aerial bombing attack really would mean the end for them. She shivered involuntarily. "I can't believe how bad everything's got."

"It was always going to go this way." Ebony was in a bitingly sarcastic mood. "It's a war, Salene. When Racha said he wanted to fight Silver, what did you think he was offering us? A really ferocious chess tournament?"

"I knew there was going to be fighting. I just never imagined how much. Don't tell me you're not bothered by all of this?"

"Maybe." Ebony shrugged. "But the difference between us, Salene, is that you care about everybody who's getting shot. I don't. There are very few people that I care about, and I couldn't care less what happens to the rest of this lot. Let them shoot each other. Let them blow each other up. It's got to be good for us. Right?"

"Not necessarily. There are more of them in the main Fury force." Bray lowered the binoculars for a while to look over at her. "If they kill all of Racha's people we're no better off. Silver still wants us hung, drawn and quartered, remember?"

"Fair point." Ebony shrugged. "Still, I can't say I'm sorry when another little Fury keels over, whichever side of this they're on. Whoever blew up that electricity generator was probably thinking the same thing."

"Whoever blew it up wasn't thinking at all. Or if they were, they weren't thinking about the good of the city. Setting all of this in motion was insane." Bray took a swift sip of warm water from the canteen that hung over his shoulder. It tasted of the soot that covered him from his intermittent attempts to play fireman, but it was better than being thirsty all of the time; not that any of them had enough water to really prevent that. He was hungry too, but food was harder to come by. None of them had eaten at all in the last twenty-four hours.

"Who do you think it was?" asked Salene. Bray shrugged.

"Racha swears none of his lot did it. I don't believe a word he says most of the time, but if he's telling the truth this time, I don't know. Lex maybe?"

"Lex doesn't have that kind of explosives," pointed out Ryan. "Anyway, if he had them, he wouldn't have gone for the generator. He'd have gone for the hotel. Either that or he'd have saved it up for smaller attacks on the tanks. That's the way Lex works."

"True." Bray shrugged. "Who then? You think there's more than one independent resistance movement?"

"I don't know who else is out there. Not anymore." Ebony sat up, reaching for her gun. "But I don't think there can be that many gangs. There just aren't that many Independents to go around. Don't forget that Racha has swallowed up a fair number of them into our little family here, and if the rumours we've been hearing about the size of Lex's forces are true, anybody else trying to recruit locals won't be getting very far."

"Yeah. And goodness knows Lex himself doesn't have that much support." Bray lowered the binoculars again, and this time threw them aside. His eyes were beginning to throb. "I wish we could do more to help him."

"Here he goes again." Ebony smiled up at him. "Bray, Lex has to fight his own battles. You can't do it for him."

"And you certainly can't go off and join him," added Ryan. "I don't know what's going on between you and Racha, but if you walk out of here, he won't stop until he's got you. Or shot you."

"Yeah. One or the other." Bray pulled Ebony to her feet. "Anyway, if I'm going to run off to find somebody, it's not going to be Lex. I just want to help him out, that's all. Wouldn't you rather he won than Silver or Racha?"

"It's not going to happen," Ryan put a temporary end to the conversation with another volley of gunfire, then looked back at the others. "He's got nothing to fight with."

"But there's a cache of arms hidden somewhere in this city," pointed out Bray. Ebony sighed.

"This again. Bray, if those arms were here, somebody would have found them by now. Between us we all took this city apart when the adults died. The looting, the vandalism - everything of value was taken. Face it, the guns are just an urban myth."

"Not necessarily. Remember the secret facility on Hope Island. Nobody had got in there, had they. There are other places like that, here and there. Places that nobody found, or that nobody could get into. Places that didn't seem to have anything worth taking, and got left alone. We found a bunch of them when we went looking for the Antidote, before you joined us, Ebony. And later, when we came back from Eagle Mountain and went looking again. All kinds of places."

"Which, like you said yourself, we already looked in. And no guns, remember? Bray we turned those places upside down looking for anything we could make use of. And we didn't find anything."

"Maybe." He was still looking at her, determination in his eyes. "But those guns are somewhere. It makes sense that there'd have been some. Why train up a youth army to defend the city, and then not give them anything to fight with?" He broke off at the sound of several explosions, but they were far enough away not to be a threat. A few bullets peppered the ground, but they seemed to be shots that had been aimed at the main body of fighters, and which had merely overshot their mark. Nothing to be immediately concerned by. Salene wished that Ryan wouldn't fire back with such enthusiasm.

"You're really sure about these guns, aren't you?" she asked. Bray nodded.

"You can call it wishful thinking. Maybe it is. But when this is over, both sides are bound to be depleted. Lex might have a chance, no matter how few people he's got in comparison, if he can come out against a war weary enemy with a good stock of weapons of his own. If all of his people have a gun each, he'll have a much better chance than he does at the moment. I think it's something worth considering. We can't steal him the guns that Racha has stockpiled, we're too well watched for that, and we don't really have any way of getting them to him anyway. But if we can find those hidden guns..."

"How? We can't exactly go and look. We can't tell him to either. He can't go hunting around the city when there's tanks all over the place and a bloody war being fought all over." Ebony sighed. "Look Bray, just change the record okay? All you've talked about since Ryan first mentioned the things are those guns. Every time I see you you're thinking about some new possible hiding place, and every time it gets shot down in flames. Face it, if there were any guns hidden in any of these places, somebody would have found them. Now stop thinking about might be's, and start thinking about the here and now. We've got a war to fight, whatever you think of it. Shoot straight and stop being an idiot. At least this way we might have a chance of getting something for ourselves out of all of this. Racha might start thinking of us as allies; and then, if he wins, we'll be in a good position. Isn't that better than throwing everything away on half-baked plans that aren't going anywhere?"

"Boy, you don't let up, do you." Bray had to break off again, this time as the ground shook violently under their feet. The sound of gunfire drowned out even the explosions for several teeth-clenching minutes. When it was over again he snatched Ebony's gun, and threw it as far as he could.

"You think anything we win for Racha with these is ever going to do any of us any good? Racha is crazy. You must be able to see that? Really crazy. If he wins this war it won't be to create the sort of city that'll be good for anybody, and he certainly won't be giving us any breaks, or giving us any rewards for helping him to victory. We'll be lucky if he doesn't kill us all once he's run out of ways of playing with us."

"He does seem pretty weird," commented Ryan. "Like he's in another world half of the time. I don't trust him. And they're all Tribe Fury anyway, right? So whoever wins, we're not going to be better off."

"Exactly." Bray watched dispassionately as Ebony went off to retrieve her gun. "The only people who can be trusted to run this city are us. Not Silver or Racha. And the only way--" He broke off, but this time there were no sudden explosions to force him into silence. Ebony raised an eyebrow.

"You finally realised that nobody's listening to you?"

"We're listening to him," said Salene with annoyance, although Ryan rather cancelled out her claim by interrupting to shoot at the enemy instead of taking the time to agree with her. Ebony smiled.

"Sure you are, Salene. And when it comes to the battle, you're going to be a really useful soldier for Bray to have fighting on his side."

"Leave it out, Ebony." Bray had begun to pace, apparently oblivious to the target he presented to snipers. Smoke drifted after him as he walked, showing that another firebomb had landed somewhere, but either he didn't notice it, or didn't care enough to set about his self appointed task of fighting the flames. "I stopped because I had an idea." He smiled around at them all. "I think I know where those guns are."

"Oh no..." Groaning loudly, Ebony shook her head. "Bray, I should just shoot you now and do us all a favour. Cut out the middle man. Will you please start thinking about something else? We have to worry about staying alive to the end of this fight - and that's more important than what Lex can or can't do. Let him fight his own battles."

"He can't do that without weapons." Bray snatched away her gun once again, this time upending it to draw in the soot and the dust at his feet. "Look. This is the Mall, right?" He drew a box. "And this is the main road out front... here's the docks, and the hotel, and the old library... You see?"

"Yeah, we all did geography." Ebony glanced over at Ryan. "Well, some of us did. What are you getting at?"

"What's this building here?" He pointed to a square that he had just drawn, some way out from the others on his map. Ebony shrugged.

"Can't really tell. The old hospital?"

"Or that meat packing place?" asked Ryan. Bray shook his head.

"No. You don't know what it is, and you wouldn't even if you were there. Because it isn't anything."

"Oh, well that's helpful then," muttered Ebony. Salene glared at her.

"Shut up," she snapped. "Go on, Bray."

"It isn't anything, because that's what it's designed to look like. Just a big empty building, but with a secret place that nobody knows about. And I mean, nobody. When I found it by chance, just after we got back from Eagle Mountain, it hadn't been touched by anybody. You'd have thought there hadn't been any trouble out on the streets, to see the way it looked inside."

"The place where you met Danni?" Salene spoke gently, not sure quite how he felt about that, or about hearing his old girlfriend's name. He nodded, looking a little distant.

"The place where I met Danni. A secret room, designed by her father. His secret room; and he was a part of the administration at the end. He designed the Virus, remember? Part of some military thing. Well if you had to hide a secret armoury, where would you hide it? In some obvious place, or even some non-obvious place, where you risk anybody finding it - or in a secret room you could be almost one hundred percent sure nobody would ever find? And nobody did find it."

"You did," pointed out Ryan. Bray nodded.

"Only because I was specifically looking. Because I was looking for information on the Antidote, and the Virus, and I was looking for some kind of secret place where that kind of information might be kept. You think vandals and looters and mad gangs of kids were being that cerebral? If Danni's dad was important enough to have had a place like that, and to have been involved in the Virus project to start off with, he might just be the kind of person who'd be involved in an attempt to hold on to civilisation after everything started to go crazy. He'd certainly know before anybody else that there weren't going to be many survivors. Right?"

"Right." Ebony was sounding interested now. "That does actually make sense."

"I know it does. If he and his friends knew that the Virus had got out, they'd know that there probably wouldn't be many of them left once it was all over. They'd be hoping that the worse case scenario wouldn't be as bad as it turned out to be, but they'd know that special arrangements would have to be made. I think he, or at the very least somebody he knew, would have been involved in setting up the child army. And his secret annexe is the place where an arms cache would be safe. I say that's where they are."

"Only one way to find out," pointed out Ryan. Bray nodded.

"Yeah. But how are we going to get to them?"

"We aren't," Ebony told him. "You even try to get away, and if Racha doesn't kill you it'll only be because Silver's people have beaten him to it." The ground shook again, more violently this time. "That's always supposing we survive long enough to think about going to look for them, anyway."

"That makes us all feel a lot better." Salene snatched up another ammunition clip for Ryan's rifle when he began to eject the empty one, handing it up to him as though it was something she had been doing for years. Ebony smiled sardonically.

"Oh we've got every chance of surviving, Salene. I'm sure we have. We're the world's most likely band of fighters, after all."

"There's no need for that." Bray handed her back her gun, proving her point by his apparent inability to get rid of it fast enough. Bray might be a talented hand to hand fighter, and he knew where he was with any number of less explosive weapons, but guns were definitely not his thing. Killing in general wasn't, which of course was exactly what Ebony had meant.

"So what do we do?" asked Ryan. Bray shrugged.

"Try to get a message to Lex somehow."

"And you know where he is? You know somebody we can trust to get the message delivered?" Ebony shook her head. "I don't think so. Maybe if the fighting wasn't going on one of us would get the chance to get away, but there hasn't been a let up in days. You're needed here. You might not like this fight, but we need every man, even if you are just fighting fires and watching out for tanks. You leave and it might be one of us who pays the price."

"I know that." He rubbed a hand across his face, obviously tired. They were all tired. "Maybe something will turn up. Maybe Lex will come out this way."

"And maybe you're wrong, and you don't know where those guns are at all." Ebony shouldered her rifle. "I'm going up the front. The more Racha sees us getting into the thick of things, the better. I'm sorry, Bray. In the absence of anything better, I'm going to keep looking like a loyal little recruit. For the time being, Racha is the guy in charge; and if there's one thing I've learnt dealing with gang leaders and megalomaniacs, it's that you stay on the right side of them. I'll be back this way later." She headed off, using a lithe, crouched gait that made her look as though she had run through such war zones all her life. Bray stared after her, feeling somewhat abandoned. Ebony might be a pain in the neck, but she was the best friend that he had right now, and if she didn't side with him, he wasn't sure where that left his hopes and plans. He couldn't really turn his back on the idea of finding the resistance some weapons though, could he? He couldn't really hope, as apparently she did, that Racha might turn out to be a benevolent - or, at the very least, not too wildly sadistic - ruler? A violent explosion prevented him from thinking about it any further. There were shouts now; flames that he could see, leaping up in the near distance. To hell with it all. Lex was a thought for another day. Grabbing up one of the buckets of sand that were kept about the place for just this purpose, he ran off into the thick of the chaos. Already there were more gunshots; as though some new high point had been reached in the fighting. Already, with that one burst of fire, it was as though everything had gone into overdrive. He felt flame on his face, and almost welcomed the temporary end to rational thought that it heralded. The ground shook under his feet, and another fire burst into life just in front of him. Somebody was shouting something about tanks. Somebody else was screaming, and nearby a wall began to tumble. It looked as if the stakes had been raised yet again. Whoever had blown up that electricity generator, Bray hoped that they were pleased with all it had inspired. Given the scale of it all, it would have been rather a shame if they weren't.

It was on the seventh day of the battle that Amber began to crumble. The noise of the fighting had kept them all awake for several days without respite; they hadn't eaten in two. They hadn't been able to travel for the last couple of days, for fear of being caught up in the fighting, so they spent the time holed up in what seemed to have once been a travel agency. It was a modern building, thin-walled, with a brilliant blue carpet on the floor, and posters on the walls that shouted of sun and fun and exhilaration. White water canoe trips; windsurfing on great lakes; pony trekking along South American mountains. KC and Chloe played Anywhere But Here, inspired by the posters, until Amber barked them into silence. They weren't anywhere - they were stuck here. Freezing cold, hungry, scared - and bored. Fear shouldn't be so boring, really, or at least so Amber thought - but it was. Huddling in an office, unable to go out, unable to do anything to relieve the tedium, all made their lives very boring indeed.

Sasha sang to them at first, quietly; but soon the atmosphere lulled even him into silence. Michaels sat behind an old upturned desk, and muttered to himself under his breath - snatches of old army training mantras, as far as Amber could hear, mixed up with old prayers learnt in school, or perhaps from his parents. His eyes were closed most of the time, and his hands gripped part of an old broom handle, just as though he thought he was holding a gun.

And by that seventh day, when rain was pounding on the thin walls, and leaking through the broken panes of glass in the door; when the wind was howling, and hurling litter through the air with childish fury; when the thunder, half-hearted in comparison, failed to drown out the sounds of the people fighting and dying far too close by - Amber began to feel that she was going mad. Eden was crying, as he had been crying for almost a day without a break. She had tried everything she could think of, but nothing would make him stop. It grated on her nerves, invaded her conscious and her unconscious; played upon her senses. With the sleep deprivation and the hunger, it all became worse still, and the tiny cries seemed to grow in volume just to spite her. Sasha tried pacing with the child, singing softly to it, but the thunder and the wind, and the hammering of the rain, not to mention the unease of its mother, all left the baby fractious and tearful. KC and Chloe talked quietly in low voices, bothered by the change that seemed to be coming over Amber. She no longer seemed to be herself. KC blamed Bray for going missing, Chloe blamed Eden, or wanted to. Whatever the cause, all of Amber's usual resilience seemed to have deserted her. Not that any of them felt especially resilient by then.

By nightfall, when KC and Chloe were trying to sleep, dozing fitfully between the louder explosions, and Michaels' constant muttering had faded into silence, Sasha sat down beside Amber, and laid Eden down between them, in his customary place. He had stopped crying at last, though it seemed unlikely to last. Amber was sure that he was hungry, but she no longer felt capable of giving him all that he needed.

"What's wrong?" Sasha had been avoiding too close contact in recent days, since Amber had so convinced herself that Bray was dead. It didn't seem right to try to get close to somebody suffering from a bereavement. Now though, knowing that it was what she needed, he slipped an arm around her shoulder and eased her closer to him. She closed her eyes.

"Everything," she said at last. "Everything. Sasha... if I don't eat soon, where will the milk come from? I can't produce any if I don't eat. But we can't go hunting for it now, it would be suicide. I used to think that I was so brave, but now... It's like every risk I took before, and every brave thing I did, doesn't count for anything anymore, because it was only my own life that I was risking then. Now it's him too. Eden. He means everything, Sasha. Everything. I can't take risks anymore, because I can't risk him. Every time I feel scared it feels a hundred times worse, because I'm afraid for him. I'm worried for him. I'm afraid for his next meal, about how I'm going to raise him when we're stuck out here on our own, with all this fighting going on. Before, when Trudy had her baby, we were safe in the Mall, and there weren't all these guns and bombs and tanks. We had food, even if it was just a little. But it didn't matter so much then anyway. I care for Brady, especially since she's Bray's niece. Eden's cousin. But she's not my baby, so I couldn't ever worry so much about her." She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. "And I sort of wish that he'd never been born, because I don't feel like I know who I am anymore. And I want to be like I was before. It was all so much easier then."

"Easier?" He stroked her hair gently. "Really?"

"Different. Easier. I don't know." She opened her eyes, and very, very gently stroked Eden's hair, just as Sasha was stroking hers. "Strange, isn't it. I didn't want a baby. I talked... about trying to find a way of getting rid of him, when I first realised I was pregnant. I didn't think this was any world to have a child in. It was Bray who wanted him, although I think he was even more scared by the idea than I was. And now I have our baby, but I don't have Bray, and in a way I still feel that everything will be alright. Just as long as I can keep Eden safe."

"We will."

"Will we? How? Tomorrow we'll have to find food. We can't go any longer without it or we'll be in no shape for anything. We're tired, and we can't move very fast, and we don't know where to look. There are fighters everywhere, and I doubt we'll get very far without being seen. I never thought of myself as the pessimistic type, and I'm certainly no defeatist. But you tell me how we're going to keep Eden safe. We can't keep ourselves safe. We're trapped, Sasha."

"Never say die." He smiled at her, but she had eyes only for Eden. He heard the strain in her voice when she answered him.

"I'm not saying die. But I think I might be saying surrender."

"Surrender? Amber... no. You're not the type to throw in with Tribe Fury. They're the opposite of everything that means anything to you."

"Right now the only thing that means anything to me is Eden. We're not that far from the Fury ranks. We can't be - listen to how loud the fighting is. If I thought we could reach the Mall... But you know as well as I do that we can't. Certainly not with Eden. But we can make it to the Furies, if we walk out there and show ourselves, and tell them what we want."

"They'd shoot first and ask questions later. It's what they do."

"No. That's what they do to the ones they find trying to hide from them. It's what they'd do if they caught us out looking for food, or trying to find a better place to hide, and I'm not risking that. Not with Eden. But if we walk over to them, plain as day, they'll take us in. We know they're recruiting. It's what they've been doing since they first came to the city; the refugees we met outside told us that."

"You really think they'd take us in, and not just shoot us on the spot?"

"Probably." She frowned. "You know, when I said 'we', I meant Eden and I. I'd never ask anybody else to share this with me. I know how much your freedom means to you."

"And I know how much yours means to you. I won't leave you, Amber. I promised I'd look after you and the baby, and I meant it. If you go ahead with this, I'm going with you. All the way."

"I couldn't ever ask you to do that."

"You're not asking." He looked towards the other three, all apparently now dead to the world. "What about them?"

"They're not coming. They don't need to. They're alright out here on their own, and they'll get by okay without us. Better without us and the baby getting in the way. KC will get them out of here safely." She shrugged. "Besides, they'd never agree to come; and Michaels couldn't anyway."

"I guess all that makes a certain sense." Sasha was silent for a few moments more, then let his eyes drift over to the door. The rain seemed to be letting up, and the wind wasn't as strong as before. "When were you thinking of going?"

"Soon. Before I can change my mind."

"You don't think that changing your mind might be a good thing? If you're having second thoughts..."

"Second thoughts? I'm having twentieth thoughts. Two hundredth thoughts. I just don't see any alternatives. If it weren't for Eden... But I'm not going to wish him away. I just have to accept that I have different priorities now, that's all."

"And so do I." He smiled. "Feels good, doesn't it."

"Strangely enough, yes. Having Eden is the weirdest thing, and the scariest, but it does fell good. That's why I know I'm doing the right thing."

"Yeah. Maybe. So... do you want to say goodbye?"

"To the others? Yes, of course. But no. They'd only try to stop us, or come with us, and I don't want that. Best just to leave." She picked up Eden very carefully. "Is that being unfair?"

"Not necessarily. You're right, they would try to stop us."

"Good." She stood up. "Last chance to back out then."

"I'm not leaving you to do this alone. No way. If you're going, I'm going. The only question is whether life in Tribe Fury is really what you want for your son."

"Life in Tribe Fury is better than no life at all." She smiled down at the now peacefully sleeping child. "I'd have chosen death first for myself, but... he's my son. How can I choose anything except life?"

"That's good enough for me." He picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. "How much stuff do you want to take?"

"I won't need anything. Not where we're going. You must bring your things of course. Your instruments are important. But nothing else is going to matter anymore."

"If you say so." As quietly as he could, he crossed to the door and eased it open. Fortunately the wind was no longer so loud that they risked waking the others by letting it in. Amber slipped though the crack, and Sasha followed after. His tambourine jangled as he went, but the three children showed no sign of having heard. With a last look around at them, Sasha hurried off after the little family that he now thought of as his own.

Back in the travel agent's, Chloe and Michaels slept on, oblivious to all that had happened - but KC had been awake for a while. He didn't know what had awakened him, and he wasn't sure how much of Amber and Sasha's conversation he had heard; but he had heard enough. Now he was staring at the door in shock, unable to believe what had just been decided. Surely Amber wasn't fool enough to think that her life could ever be better under Tribe Fury? He had no idea how it must feel to have a child, but it seemed insane to throw so much away out of fear for the baby's future. Making a decision, he jumped to his feet and hurried to the door, slipping out quietly into the street. Outside it was pitch black, a thick layer of cloud obliterating the moon and the stars. An occasional flash of light from the fighting illuminated the street in brief fits, but he could see no sign of Amber and Sasha even when the world was at its brief brightest. It was as if they had disappeared.

"Left or right. Left or right?" He didn't know. How could he? But if he was really to try to persuade them to change their minds, he had to choose one or the other. After a moment's further hesitation he ran off to the left, dodging from cover to cover as best he could. A burst of mortar fire lit up the road behind him, but he was set on his course by then, and had no way of knowing that the flash had momentarily picked out Amber and Sasha, scurrying anxiously along the street. They had turned right out of the travel agent's, and they were getting further away from him at every step. KC hardly had time to think about them anyway. After hiding for several days he had had no idea how bad the fighting had become, and he realised now that he was going to have to work hard just to stay alive. Another explosion rocked the ground, and he almost fell, but he knew that he had to stay on his feet. Had to keep moving. Had to keep fixed on the road up ahead. Every other thought had been driven almost instantly from his mind; every other thought except one. In the madness of that dark, bewildering run, he found that he understood at last why Michaels was the way that he was. Why he was so afraid of the idea of war. It made perfect sense to him now.

Bray was off to one side of the fighting, manning the east front in case of a sneak attack, which had been Archer's idea. He had no faith in the likelihood of Bray actually firing at anyone, give the persuasion required merely to make him carry a gun, and with that in mind he and Salene had been left with a gang of nervous new recruits in a place where they were required only to shoot on occasions, in an effort to discourage any advance. Whilst the main body of Racha's forces traded bullets with the enemy for real, as well as grenades and the occasional brick, Bray and Salene didn't find any great need to fire at anybody. They couldn't lay claim to boredom though, for the grenades directed at the front line came their way almost as often as not, and more than one fire bomb spread flames that had to be fought. Bray manned the fire fighting equipment - little more than sand from a number of bags, along with one rusting fire extinguisher. Salene surprised herself with her own determination, trying to stir the younger kids from their almost paralytic nervousness in order to work out some kind of early warning alert for incoming bombs. The ground seemed to shake almost constantly, and the explosions and gunfire both close by and further away, only sporadically drowned out the fearful whimpering of volunteers who had never really known what they were volunteering for. Salene didn't think she had ever seen a more dreadful time in her life than those days of battle; of sleeping in snatches and by rota, and of hardly eating at all. She didn't want to think what it must be like where the real fighting was going on; what it must be like for Ryan. She consoled herself with thoughts of how much he seemed to enjoy to fight, and of how enthusiastic he had been to get started. Better to think of things like that than to worry about what might happen. Not that there was a great deal of time to think. Her life was about action, and noise, and flames, and children crying when they thought no one was looking. She didn't think that things could possibly be worse - until the rains came, and she knew that the bad things had hardly begun.

The rain was torrential; the kind that bounced off the ground after it struck, and made the puddles foam on the surface. The kind that brought darkness to the world even in the middle of the day, let alone the night. The wind picked up almost as soon as the sun hid itself away behind the cloud, and soon much of the rain seemed to be travelling horizontally. It was hard to breathe, hard to see; but still the grenades came, and the gun shots sounded out all around them. Even the fire bombs still came, sometimes catching, other times fizzling out hopelessly. Some unseen assailant hurled a brick that dropped a boy standing at Salene's shoulder, and she was left trying to care for the unconscious child in an inch deep puddle, with rain obscuring her vision, and her hands frozen almost to the marrow. Another boy handed her random items from their already largely random first aid kit, and she wished that she knew what she was doing. Bray dragged over some pieces of litter to use as a shelter, but although it helped to keep the worst of the rain from her patient, still a fair amount of it seemed to be pouring onto his face. The puddles around his head were tinged with pink from the blood running from the wound left by the brick, and every so often he tried to fight off Salene's hands, whilst shouting at her and calling her 'dad'. She was almost glad when the slackening off of the rain brought more fire bombs, and something else to take up her attention. Watching out for airborne explosives might be frightening, and might be the forerunner of great injury and unpleasantness to follow, but it felt less immediately distressing than watching the unconscious boy gargling rainwater and mud.

"I think I've lost all feeling in my hands and feet." She was standing in yet another puddle, a rifle she wasn't entirely sure how to use cradled in her arms just for the reassurance of holding something. Of holding anything. Somebody nearby screamed a warning, and just as she had thought Bray had been about to answer her, they all had to duck behind cover again. A grenade exploded more or less harmlessly on the other side of a stout wall, though the ground still shook impressively. Bray reappeared, eyes smouldering like flames put out by the rain.

"I hate this," he growled. Salene wanted to believe that he meant the whole thing, but he seemed to mean being stuck where he was, on the periphery of it all. Perhaps he would rather have been where the others were, where the fighting was going on in earnest. Maybe then he could feel as though he were doing some good. She tried speaking to him, but he wasn't in the mood for chat.

A streak of tracer fire lit up the sky, and brought with it a renewed intensity to the gunfire. A fire bomb landed at Salene's feet, and although it failed to go off she was still shaking helplessly five minutes after Bray had thrown it away in rare fury. Suddenly she wanted to be the delirious boy lying on the ground muttering about his father. He might be at death's door for all she knew, but at least he didn't seem to know anything of what was going on. She told herself off for her nervousness - it wasn't as though it was a fraction as bad here as it was where Ryan must be stationed. She should be thankful that Archer had had such a low opinion of her abilities. Here there had been no fatalities as yet, but she knew that the same would not be true of the front. She just wished that she could be as brave as Ryan, and stop wishing herself into oblivion.

"Somebody's coming." Bray had materialised beside her again, although he didn't look much like himself. Soot and sand had been painted across his face by the rain, and from the middle of it all his eyes looked out as though from somebody else's face. Salene tried not to be distracted by the sight, and instead concentrated on following his line of sight.

"Enemy?" she asked. Bray shrugged.

"Hard to tell, isn't it. But probably."

"Everybody else is hiding," she mused. "If there is an 'everybody else' anymore. It seems as though the whole of the city is out here today."

"Far from it. This is a small battle. We don't even have half our own people out here, and Silver has a lot more dotted about in other places."

"I don't want to know how many more there are of them, thankyou." She blinked into the fading rain, trying to see the person that Bray had spotted. "What do we do?"

"Always supposing nobody shoots him before he gets to us, we see what he wants."

"And if he opens fire, or is just trying to get close enough to throw a bomb?"

"I don't know. Shoot him I suppose." He picked up the gun he had put down in order to fight the fires, and turned it over in his hands. He looked as though he was trying to decide whether or not he would be able to fire it. Salene had her doubts, and hoped that they were right.

"I still can't see anything." A distant explosion made her flinch, before she realised that it was too far away to mean anything other than a faint trembling of the ground underfoot. Bray pointed, then lifted up his rifle and stepped forward. Several of the younger boys crowded after him, either anxious to prove themselves, or just wanting to stay close to the one member of the unit who didn't appear to be scared stiff. Salene could sympathise, if that was the cause. She didn't want Bray too far away from her either.

"Who's there?" Bray managed to make his voice sound authoritative, which was more than most of them could manage right now. He was pointing his gun at what Salene could now see to be a figure. Not a large one, but then size probably didn't matter much with the kind of weapons Tribe Fury had. Whoever it was, he heard the shout but perhaps didn't hear the individual words. He gave no answer, anyway, but kept on coming, a hurrying figure trying to keep to the shadows. Bray shouted again, and somewhere close by a shot rang out. Everybody ducked.

"Oh no." Salene brandished her own rifle, as though somehow that would serve as a deterrent to any snipers. Another shot rang out, and the small, hurrying figure began to hurry faster.

"Don't shoot!" he shouted, tripping over rubble and sliding about in all the rainwater as he ran. "I don't have a gun. I'm... I'm just looking for somebody. I'm not an Independent, honest!"

"KC?" Bray couldn't believe the voice that he was hearing, but in the darkness they were still too far apart to see faces. "KC, is that you?"

"Huh?" For a second the hurrying, stumbling figure halted, then with a sudden burst of speed ran on again. "Bray?!"

"Keep your voice down. You'll attract the snipers. Looks like a couple of them just moved in." Bray ran forward, meeting the smaller boy halfway and almost dragging him along. "What the hell are you doing out here? You're supposed to be safe in the Mall."

"And you're supposed to be dead!" KC pulled back for a moment, trying to let it all sink in. "Are you with Tribe Fury?"

"No. Yes." Bray grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him on to the others. A few bullets skimmed the tarmac by their feet, but the snipers apparently had no real skill. Perhaps Silver's forces had also been divided into capable fighters, and the hopeless type banished to the perimeter.

"I don't understand." Almost falling over the now comatose boy who had been hit by the brick earlier, KC skidded to a halt in a puddle. He looked cold and miserable, but the spark of life in his eyes was as hot as ever. "You're dead. Everybody knows you're dead. Or... we thought you were. The fight with the Locos, and Ebony. It was a massacre."

"Yes. It was pretty much." Bray pulled him under cover behind a wall that had broken in half earlier in the day. "But what about you? You were supposed to be back at the Mall."

"Change of plan. Lots of changes of plan. It's complicated."

"Very, by the sound of it. You said you weren't an Independent?"

"Yeah, to keep from getting my head shot off. I'm as independent as I ever was." KC spotted Salene and threw her a wave, but busy as she was in the vigil for incoming missiles, she didn't do anything more than wave back. "How about you? 'No. Yes,' wasn't that great an answer."

"It's complicated. Tribe Fury split. You knew that, right? Well I got roped into one side of it. I haven't decided yet if it beats being dead. I just keep wishing I was with Lex instead."

"Yeah. You and me both. Ever since the baby came we've been..." KC trailed off. "Bray, I--"

"Baby?" Bray was looking him up and down. "It hasn't been that long, KC. Not for you to..."

"It's not mine. I..." KC didn't know where to begin. "Bray, this is important. Have you seen anybody else coming this way tonight. Anybody?"

"You were the first. Why?"

"Then she must have gone the other way." KC closed his eyes for a moment. It struck him that he had a lot of important things to say, and that was something with which he was decidedly unfamiliar. "Look, I'm sorry, but I can't... I mean there's no easy way..." He grabbed hold of the wall for support as a grenade somewhere nearby made the earth shake, and showed him, for a moment, the earnest eyes amid the mask of filth. "Bray, you have a son. Chloe and I have been with Amber since just before he was born. I'm not sure how long ago exactly."

"Amber?" Beneath the sand and soot Bray had gone pale, although there was no way for anybody to know it. "Amber is near here? In the middle of all this?"

"No, not here. I'm here because I thought I was following her, but she must have gone the other way. She was at her wit's end, you know. Convinced you were dead, no food, no sleep since the fighting got bad. Scared for the baby all the time. I think it all got too much. She ran off a little while ago, with the baby. She was going to surrender." He stared up at the older boy, confused by the apparent lack of response. "Bray? You can't really blame her. She thought they'd have a better chance of survival, I think. I know I should have tried to stop her, but I just didn't know what to say."

"It's not your fault." Bray didn't hear himself speak the words, and wasn't really aware of the need to say them. "I... I have a son?"

"She called him Eden. It was supposed to signify building a better world than this one. Bray..."

"I have to get to them. She was going to the other side?"

"She must have gone that way. She had to head to one side of the fight or the other. She might not have--"

"They're not far away. How long have you been running?"

"Not long. I don't know. We were roughly halfway between your lot and theirs. Listen, I'm sorry. I thought I'd come after her. I must have gone in the wrong direction."

"Not your fault." Bray's voice was sounding increasingly thick, coloured by several very forceful emotions. "She's probably... They'd take her to the hotel though, right? I mean, that's where they've always processed recruits. The hotel."

"Right to the lion's den." KC felt faintly sick. "What are we going to do? Try to get a message to her? If she knew you're alive..."

"I've got to get after her. I've got to. I have to--" Bray wasn't sure what he had to do, or how exactly he was going to do it. He merely threw aside his rifle, and steered KC out of the way.

"Get back to the Mall," he advised. "I'd imagine it's still safe there. Things are going to get worse before they get better, and the next sniper you encounter might have had more target practice than the ones here tonight."

"Bray, you can't go to the hotel."

"I can go wherever I want." He hesitated, then retrieved the gun and handed it to KC. "Look after yourself. And wherever you'v been lately, forget it and go back to the Mall."

"I'm coming with you!"

"I'll move faster alone. Besides, I..." He frowned. "KC, can you do something for me?"

"Probably. I get around this city almost better than anyone. Always did."

"You're not as small as you used to be, you know. You should be careful." Bray fixed him with one of his most serious gazes. "Did you mean it when you said about wanting to join Lex? Do you think, if you really had to, you could find him?"

"Sure! There are all kinds of whispers in the streets that Tribe Fury never hear. Why? You want him to help you get Amber back?"

"No. I want him to keep fighting Tribe Fury. Both halves. Now listen. If you manage to find Lex, you have to tell him something from me, okay? Tell him to go to where I met Danni. He knows where it is. Tell him to take the place apart. Walls, furniture, floor, whatever. There's guns hidden there somewhere, I'm sure of it."

"Guns?" KC's eyes widened. Bray could see the next word coming from a mile away. "Cool! How many?"

"That's one thing we don't know. Just tell him it's what was stockpiled for him and his kind to use against the rest of us. And KC?"

"Yeah?"

"Do it fast."

"Sure." He offered the older boy an awkward smile. "It's been good to see you, Bray. I know we've had our difficulties..."

"No more than me and Lex." Bray clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm sorry I don't have any food for you, and I can't offer you much else either. If you want to stay here until it's light--"

"No." KC shook his head. "I have my own people to be getting back to. They're depending on me. I'll find Lex, as soon as I can."

"Don't get shot getting out of here."

"You either. I wouldn't fancy explaining that to Amber."

"I'm not getting shot until I've seen my son." Bray's eyes shone at that word. "Take care, KC." With that he was gone. A few bullets echoed his departure, but that was all. Salene hurried over not long after he had disappeared.

"Hi."

"Hey, Salene." This was quite a night for surprises. First someone he had thought dead, and now someone he had believed to be safely out of the city. "I didn't realise you'd come back."

"I got back just before Tribe Fury split. Trust me to walk into the middle of all of this. Ryan's here too." She frowned. "Don't think that I'm not pleased to see you, but where has Bray gone?"

"After Amber. To stop her from giving herself up to Tribe Fury." KC grinned. "I reckon he'll make it too. Knows almost every shortcut. Plus he's always been lucky."

"Amber? Giving herself up?" Salene couldn't imagine what would make the girl to something like that - until she remembered that Amber was expecting a baby. Salene had thrown in with the Chosen to protect her own unborn child. This was not really any different. "Still... he shouldn't have gone. If Racha finds out he'll kill him."

"If the fighting carries on like this nobody is going to be finding out anything about anyone." The boy smiled up at her. "I have to get going. It's been great seeing you. Tell Ryan I said hi."

"You're leaving?"

"Why not? It's no worse out there than it is here. Watch yourself, Salene. Don't forget you're not among friends." He almost hugged her, but didn't. When all was said and done, it wasn't really his style. "See you soon."

"I hope."

"Yeah." He smiled at her, the familiar childishness in his bright eyes. Then, just like Bray, he was gone. Salene almost didn't dare to watch as he ran, in case somebody saw him; in case somebody decided to send him on his way with a bullet or a grenade. She was still holding her breath long after he had gone out of sight.

KC wasn't sure whether to find Lex first, or whether to go back to the others. He opted for the latter. Chloe was still asleep, but she woke up as he came in, and blinked about in surprise.

"Where is everyone? And where did you get that rifle?"

"They've gone." He sat down. "And never mind the gun. I have to find Lex."

"Huh? What?" Chloe was staring at him with eyes full of sleep and surprise. "KC...?"

"Forget about it, Chlo. There isn't time right now. Amber and Sasha aren't coming back, for a while at least. And I've been sent to find Lex. It's important."

"KC, I--"

"You have to find somewhere better to hide. A cellar would be best, but make sure you mark it so I know where you are. Leave a trail like I showed you. The fighting seems to be spilling this way, and I don't want them to find you. Now I have to go."

"Will you let me get a word in? You're not making any sense!" As he got to his feet she followed suit, and caught hold of his arm. "Where has Amber gone? And where's the baby?"

"With Amber of course. She was scared. She went away with Sasha. Bray went to get her back. I don't know if he'll make it or not. He asked me to find Lex, so I have to do that now. It's important. If Bray gets to Amber in time, it won't matter where she's gone, so I'll see you soon, okay?"

"Bray?" From the moment he had first mentioned the name he had seen the changes rush through her eyes. Shock, delight, disbelief. "You're really seen Bray?"

"Yes. He gave me the rifle. I know it's weird, and I'm sorry I left you here, but there wasn't any time, and I really don't have time to explain right now. I'll see you soon, Chlo. I'm sorry this is all so rushed, but I should do this as soon as I can, and I only came back to you first so that you didn't worry. I have to go now."

"Alright..." She didn't understand, and the confusion covered her whole face. Michaels hadn't spoken, but then Michaels was not often one for active participation. KC looked from one to the other of them.

"You'll find somewhere better to stay, right? But don't go looking for food, it's not safe. If I find Lex we can get something to eat from him. Okay?"

"Yeah. Okay." She was still looking confused; still looking like she wanted the full version of events rather than the truncated version she was stuck with. "KC, how are you planning to find Lex? Do you know where he is?"

"Not really. Thought I'd start with the Mall." He shrugged. "If it hadn't been for Amber having the baby, and us having to lay up all the time, we'd probably have gone back there by now anyway, so it's as good a place as any to start. If it doesn't work out I'll come back and find you and we'll... Look, I really have to go now." He smiled awkwardly. "I-- Goodbye." And preferring just to get it over with, he went, scurrying away like the street urchin he had always been. Chloe couldn't believe how big a wrench it was to see him go.

KC ran, without much thought of danger. There were two ways to do this, he reasoned; be ginger, and get nowhere, or be oblivious to the risks and run flat out. So long as he stayed away from the places where the fighting was worst, he felt that he should be okay, for the most part. He was afraid, but in many ways it felt good to be doing it; good to be doing what he had missed doing since the baby had been born. Amber had forbidden them all from doing anything that risked capture, partly on the grounds that an interrogation might lead the enemy to her baby. It seemed so hypocritical that she could then turn around and go straight to that enemy with the child. Not that there was any point in dwelling on such things now. He just ran, and fed on the adrenalin; and prayed that nobody saw him, or opened fire.

It seemed strange to be heading back to the Mall. To be in familiar streets, familiar hiding places - heading for a place for which he had headed so many times, and in so many different circumstances. After all that had happened it seemed stranger still. The streets were deserted, though he didn't believe that there was truly no one around, and he could see no sign of Fury roof guards. He padded on, slowed now, near to the end of his strength. Running was so much more exhausting when you were afraid. Up ahead even the dumpsters looked familiar. He had thought that they looked the same all over the city, but here there seemed to be a uniqueness; a friendliness; in the coloured sprawl of the overflowing litter. He went on, almost feeling warm thoughts of comradeship for the graffiti, for the familiar pattern of broken windows and crooked drain covers. He went more carefully then, anxious not to lose it all so close to the end. The snipers' bullets that had skimmed so close to his feet when he had met with Bray were the closest he had ever come to gunfire, and he had no desire to get any closer. Too many explosions were echoing inside his memory, and he didn't want to hear any more. Not now. Not, with preference, ever.

Nobody challenged him though. Nobody opened fire. The war, no matter how ghastly, apparently had its good points, even if there were people at the front paying for his current freedom of movement. Climbing through one of the new entrance-ways, chosen by himself half a lifetime ago, when Tribe Fury had been a new and unknown threat, he stared about at those so very familiar corridors. They were quiet, but then he hadn't been expecting a welcoming committee. He only hoped that the lack of one wasn't due to the absence of all of his friends.

He started in the lobby, then went to the canteen. Both were empty, although the canteen at least showed signs of having been used recently. He poured himself some water from one of the plastic storage tanks, and hunted out a couple of cheese crackers from a dusty tub. It bothered him that no alarms had gone off, though he supposed that the Mall was meant to appear derelict these days. He couldn't really remember how long he had been away, and so couldn't be sure just how much change he should expect.

"Hello?" He was dubious about whether he should call out, for he didn't know if the place was still in the hands of his friends. If they were hiding, though, he had to get them out somehow. One way or another he had to find out what was going on here. Where Lex was. He called again, and this time thought that he heard footsteps. Faint footsteps, and maybe a whisper. He swallowed hard. Ah well - he had wanted to find out if there was anybody around.

"It's me. KC. Lex? Tai-San? Jack?" He went to the top of the stairs. "Lex, I have to talk to you."

"Lex isn't here." The voice made him jump, and he whirled about in such shock that he almost fell down the stairs. Of all the voices he had expected to hear, that of an unknown, tiny child was the last. He gaped.

"Who the hell-?"

"I'm Megan." She was about six years old, and small for her age, with a pale face, large dark eyes, and very long black hair. Almost ethereal, somehow. Weird, like so many of the underfed children of the city. She was smiling though, and she didn't look hostile. He noticed that her eyes never left his borrowed gun. "Hello. Did you say you were called KC?"

"Yeah." He frowned, feeling somewhat confused. "Listen, I need to speak to Lex. It's important. Do you know who I mean?"

"I know Lex. He comes here sometimes. Mostly they live somewhere else though."

"Who does? Live where?" He advanced towards her. "Look, I don't know who you are or what you're doing here, but--"

"KC!" It was Trudy's voice, and it made him jump almost as much as had Megan. "KC!"

"Trudy." He received her hug with only mild embarrassment and impatience. "Hi."

"Hi? After all this time, disappearing without a word? Hi?!" She looked around. "Where's Chloe?"

"Safe. I need to speak to Lex."

"He's not here." Her eyes narrowed. "What's going on?"

"Stuff. Important stuff. I have a message for Lex from Bray, and--"

"Bray!" The delight on her face was like nothing he had ever seen before, and only then did he remember the relationship between the two of them. "You've spoken to him? Recently?"

"I was with him and Salene just a little while ago. They seemed okay. Bit frazzled maybe. Where is Lex?"

"Oh, I don't know what he does at night. Sabotage probably, and wishing he could do something as impressive as blowing up that electricity generator." She shrugged. "I don't know, I'm not a part of all of that. They left me here with all these kids to look after. I run a crèche, and that's the sum total of my involvement in fighting Tribe Fury." She sounded disgruntled, but she smiled again almost immediately. "You've really seen Bray? And he looked okay?"

"Yes... I think I said that already. Tired. Kinda filthy. He said he's got roped into the fighting. With the breakaway Furies? Some guy called Racha?"

"Yes. I know who Racha is. Of course, that was after you left. Strange sort. Likes to play games with people." She smiled gently. "Look, there's really no way of finding Lex. He'll come here when he comes here. Usually checks in to bring some food for the kids around dawn, but he doesn't often spend the night here anymore. None of them do really, except Jack. Sometimes Luke." She sounded lonely, he decided, though that was most definitely not his problem His only worry was Lex. He tried to tell her as much, but she quietened him.

"He'll be along. Jack is working on some new project, and Lex said he'd check in some time today to talk about it. In the meantime you look dreadful, KC. You might as well rest until he turns up."

"I'm supposed to be in a hurry." He looked so crestfallen that she had to laugh.

"He'll be along. Really. Remember the radio controlled helicopter, and how the camera on it let us see the hotel, when Ebony took Lex and Bray there? Well we've got a new one. One of Lex's new allies found it. Jack's redesigned it to carry more weight, and they're planning to use it to let us - them - see behind enemy lines. Lex was talking about dropping bombs with it, but Jack's refusing to try his hand at building anything that'll be small enough and still do damage." She looked distinctly relieved. "I can't say that I'm sorry."

"And you're sure that Lex will be here to talk about all of this?"

"You're starting to sound obsessed." She smiled, then gestured to little Megan. "Meg, go and make up an extra bed. You know where everything is."

"Okay." The girl ran off, her bare feet making tiny little slapping sounds on the hard floor. KC stared after her.

"Are there many of them?" he asked. Trudy frowned, then caught his meaning.

"Oh. In the crèche. About twenty-five. Everybody under ten from the tribes who've thrown in with us. With Lex. I try to teach them to read, but they just want to play at fighting Tribe Fury."

"I don't blame them. Reading never did anybody any good." KC smiled at her, feeling very old at the suggestion that it was only the under tens who were being kept out of the fighting. "I won't tell them that."

"Thankyou. I think." She put an arm around his shoulders, and started to lead him to the rooms she had moved into with the children. There seemed no point in sending him off to his old room, when she was no longer even sure that there was anything left in it. So much had been taken by Lex and his people, or cannibalised by the children of the crèche. He didn't seem to be objecting. By now, despite his insistence on speaking to Lex, it was clear that he was all but asleep on his feet. He knew it himself, though he didn't believe that he would sleep - that he would ever be able to. Not until he had spoken to Lex, and passed on the message that Bray had thought so important. He was even more certain when he saw the crèche, and the children in it, and heard the noise that they were making. Megan was standing beside a bed that she had made for him; an excitably proud looking child beside a madcap heap of cushions, what seemed to be curtains, and several army greatcoats. It didn't look like a bed that anybody could sleep on, certainly not somebody determined not to sleep at all.

Needless to say, when Lex arrived an hour later, KC was dead to the world.

Bray ran as he had never run before, until his head was swimming and his vision blurred; until his feet were numb and his legs no better. He cleared piles of rubble in giant leaps, pushed through empty buildings, battered doors, shuttered windows. Already exhausted from the struggle of the last few days back at his post, he didn't know how much energy he still had at his disposal - but he was determined to keep going for as long as he could. Amber's face, floating at the forefront of his mind, kept his feet moving faster than they had ever gone before. Amber's face - and the thought of another face that he had not yet seen. What did his son look like? What colour was his hair? If only there had been time to ask KC. To hear about the kind of baby he was. Well behaved? Noisy? How big was he? It was the most amazing thought. So long spent thinking that both mother and baby were gone. So long spent in a dulled kind of mourning, and now to discover that both were alive. To hear his son's name. To be so close to him. It was enough to make him run several marathons, if that was what it took to bring them together.

He reached the hotel just as dawn was painting the buildings with the first of their daytime colours. The sun, in hiding for so long, was finally visible as the cloud at least began to disperse. There were guards everywhere, and a large tank parked right in front of the building; deterrent enough to stop almost anybody. Positioning himself behind a low wall, Bray watched the building with eagle eyes. No sign of Amber. Could she really be inside already? Surely not yet. There was no sign of her outside though. Could she have changed her mind? Might she be safe somewhere else? Even if she was still on her way here, there was hope that he could intercept her. He just had to guess from which direction she was most likely to come. Confident now, certain of their imminent reunion, his heart sang with happiness and excitement.

And then a group of people , hidden before by the tank, came into view almost at the steps of the hotel. A group of people being met, long before Bray could move, but a contingent of guards coming down those very steps. Bray saw a girl - an all too familiar girl - with a bundle held carefully in her arms; and a boy, with a mop of familiar red hair, and an arm wrapped carefully around the girl's shoulders. She was leaning on him, and he was reaching out with his free hand to gently stroke the tiny head that emerged from the bundle in her arms. Bray's shattering heart dropped like a stone.

Amber. The baby. Someone else - Sasha? Tribe Fury guards. It was all a mess in his brain. He felt as though everything might break. With his heart a shivering mess, and his pulse pounding with fear and shock and a terrible sense of betrayal, he pushed himself up to his feet. There were guards and there were guns and there was a bloody tank, and he knew that one word from him would be enough to get his head shot off. But that was Amber. That was his girl, and his baby, and they were giving themselves up to the enemy, and what the bloody hell was Sasha doing with them? What was he doing with an arm around Amber that she seemed to enjoy so much - to be so familiar with? And what was Sasha doing treating that baby like his own? Bray had to stop them. He had to show them that they didn't need to give themselves up. He had to show Amber that he was still alive. Out of cover now, exposed but not yet seen; not caring either way; he opened his mouth to yell - just as something powerful and heavy collided solidly with the back of his legs. He fell hard, with a hoarse choke born as a cry of surprise, but stifled by something pressed over his mouth. All the same it made one of the guards look up, but nobody seemed suspicious enough to bother leaving their post. Unseen by them Bray tried to stand again, but something was holding him down. Something wiry and strong and very determined, that wrapped itself around him, and pressed a hand that smelt of cordite ever more firmly against his mouth. He tried to yell; tried to scream Amber's name; tried to free himself from the impossible tangle of familiar brown limbs; but there was no way up. He managed to sit, but it was in time only to see the door banging shut behind the little group of people. Amber was gone. Only then, inspired perhaps by that most dreadful sense of loss, did he find the strength to fight Ebony off. She fell back, and he turned on her with fearsome eyes.

"What the hell are you doing, Ebony?"

"Shut up. There's still those guards to worry about. And that tank."

"Tank? Why should I care about some tank? That was my baby! I just lost my baby to Tribe Fury. My son."

"I know. I heard some of it from Salene." Ebony looked exhausted, more so than him perhaps. "Bray--"

"Shut up. I don't believe you. What did you think you were doing? I have to get them out of there."

"Bray! Bray, damn it, listen to me! You're too well known. Every one of them knows who you are. You take one step - one step - towards that building and you'll be shot down. I know you don't want to hear it, but--"

"You don't know anything. You think I care about being shot now? I've just lost everything! Now let me go. I have to get them back."

"You'll die, you stupid fool. Where's the sense in that? Bray, you can't go near that hotel, and you can't go near any Fury, without getting shot. How's that going to help you get Amber back? Think!"

"She was with Sasha." He was mumbling now, not really talking to Ebony anymore. "They looked like a family."

"Yeah. I guess they did. She thinks you're dead, Bray. You can't blame her."

"I don't blame her." He shot her a look that was pure poison. "I blame you. For driving us out of the city, so we wound up being separated up in the mountains. For persuading me not to go straight back out of the city to find her, after Racha brought me back here. And for stopping me from stopping her just then." He stood up again, and this time she could see the resolution shining out of him - in the set of his body, the angle of his head, the clenching and unclenching of his fists. He was ready to break down the door of the hotel and do whatever needed to be done. He might almost have a chance, too - if he got very, very lucky - if it wasn't for that tank. There was no way he was going to get past that alive. No way at all. He didn't seem to notice it; hoped perhaps that it was empty, or that the crew might not look his way. Ebony shook her head. She'd be damned if she was going to stand back and watch as he walked right to his death. There were no more words that she could use though. Making a grab for one of his arms, she tried to slow him. He shook her off. He was stepping over the wall now, out of cover, and she waited, cringing, for the tank to begin to turn. For the gun to fire, or for some other gun to do so from one of the hotel's windows. For the guards on the steps to advance, or for others to come from around the sides of the building. And when they didn't, in the brief, all too brief, second that she had left before the shots did start ringing out; before the tank did fire; before Bray's luck did run out as it surely must be about to do; she did the only thing that she could do. Swinging up her rifle, feeling bad all the while, she hit him across the back of the head. He crumpled immediately, and she grabbed hold of him, dragging him into better cover than before, holding him as close as she could. She wished she could hold him closer. He wasn't unconscious. Not quite. As she held him she could hear him muttering, dazed and hurting, but still focused on the girl he had just lost all over again.

"Amber," he whispered, sounding as dejected as Ebony had ever believed someone could be. She really did feel bad for him, although that might have been in part because she was feeling so bad anyway. The fighting had been awful. It had not been a good couple of days.

"Ssh," she told him, trying to calm him. "Just take it easy. You should for now. Your head..."

"Amber." It seemed to be all that he could think of. "She was with Sasha, Ebony. They were together."

"I know." She tried rocking him, but he was a dead weight in her arms. "I'm sorry. But there's no way I was going to let you get yourself killed. Not for Amber, or for anybody. I'm sorry."

"Sorry." He still seemed confused. His eyes didn't look focused, and his shoulders were beginning to shake. "I'm sorry Amber. Let you down. Probably better off with Sasha. All my fault. Should've... done something."

"Bray..." But it was no good. He wasn't listening. Keeping one eye on the hotel in case of company, Ebony changed her position so that she could hold him more carefully, and just that little bit more tightly. He was fighting back tears. It was only then that she realised that so was she.

In the hotel most of the rooms were empty. Almost everybody was out fighting, and those few that weren't were away patrolling the perimeter of the city. There had been nobody inside the building to see the brief scuffle between Ebony and Bray; nobody, that was, save for one person.

He was standing in Silver's office, although Silver himself was not present. He was down in the cellar, where he had constructed a magnificent war room for himself over the course of the last few days. A place of maps and tables, and toy soldiers to mark the positions both of his men and Racha's. He was enjoying it all much as he might have enjoyed a game, although his heart was the heart of a soldier, and he knew that it was all for real. A part of him wanted to be out there leading his troops, but he knew that he had to stay inside. He was a figurehead; a leader; a king. If he died, so he believed, his army would die with him. And so in his bunker he remained.

The figure up in his office also had no intention of going out to fight in the war; and for fairly similar reasons. He couldn't die yet either, for his cause would also die with him. He too had to stay alive, for the good of his army, and for all that they were fighting for. The time was not yet right for him to take his place at the right hand of the one he lived to serve - or claimed to live to serve. One day, maybe, but not today. Not in this battle. Not against that foe.

And so he stood by the window, staring down at the street. He saw Amber approaching the building, and recognised her, and wondered at the baby in her arms. He saw Bray, he saw Ebony, and he saw all that passed between them. And he smiled. He was still smiling when they had passed out of sight, although he didn't really know why. Perhaps he just enjoyed seeing Bray in distress. It was something to be savoured, for it reminded him of past tussles, and of simmering resentments awaiting their resolve. And it reminded him of why he was here, and why he had decided to throw in with Tribe Fury.

For power. For victory. For the greater chance of winning himself a city; and whatever greater realms might follow after. This time, with his enemies broken and scattered; with a mighty army on his side, doing so much of his work for him; with his acolytes helping him to craft this war into something of which he could truly be proud - this time, he couldn't fail. He was going to build Zoot's empire of chaos, and he was going to build it upon the unsuspecting empire of Tribe Fury. He had come a long way since the Mall Rats had found him skulking in his world of sewers and drains.

The Guardian was heading back to glory; and it was all going just as he had planned.

THE END

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