SECTION VII

Click Here For Section VIII

The hotel was a familiar building. Amber took some comfort from that. The simple grey corridors carried little evidence of Tribe Fury's presence, and in places the decoration that she recognised still remained. One of Ebony's election posters. A poster advertising the use of their now departed currency. A public health warning from the days of the Virus. All things to make her remember, and relax just a little - then tense up when she remembered that there was nothing to relax about. This wasn't Ebony's hotel anymore. Ebony was dangerous, but Amber at least knew her; knew how to deal with her. She didn't know who she was being taken to see this time. Her arms curled protectively about Eden, but he was asleep and oblivious. Only Sasha noticed the gesture, and tightened his own grip around Amber's shoulders in response.

They were expecting to go to Ebony's old office, since it had been set up for convenient use as such, but instead they headed for the stairs. There was another surprise waiting though, for instead of being taken upstairs, to the grander rooms above, they were taken downstairs. The basement was a grim place of cells and storerooms - not where Amber had expected to be led. Surely somebody would want to speak to them, even if only to find out who they were? And they wouldn't expect to keep a young baby in a cold and dark cell? Instead they went past all of that, to a red door at the far end of the basement. A guard waited outside, face stony, body stiff. At their approach he rapped smartly on the door, then opened it without looking inside the room beyond, and moved aside to let them pass. As soon as they had entered he shut the door again, as efficient and brisk as any professional servant.

"Good morning." The sole figure awaiting them in the room was tall, with hair dyed shining silver, and a uniform more grand than even the most ostentatious military dictator had dreamt of in the old world. Gold braid and medal ribbons seemed to adorn every part of him, along with buttons that gleamed as brightly as his silver hair. Amber didn't need to wonder who he was; he had to be the Fury leader.

"It is morning, isn't it?" He came towards them, hands behind his back, swagger stick tucked under one arm, back ramrod straight. His highly polished shoes clicked smartly on the floor with every step. Amber frowned, trying to remember. She had only just been outside; she just hadn't been taking any notice of her surroundings. Sasha answered the question instead.

"More or less," he said. "The sun is just coming up."

"Dawn. Surely the finest time of day?" The silver topped vision in front of them flashed a dazzling smile. "My name is Silver. Lord General Silver. Admiral Silver. King Silver, if you prefer. The rank is unimportant; I've had underlings with higher ones I'm sure. What matters is who I am."

"We're... pleased to meet you." Amber wasn't sure quite how to react to him. She hadn't imagined that the Furies would be led by somebody who seemed to be mad. Silver's grin cranked up a notch or two, showing a charisma that couldn't be denied, and an odd warmth of personality that might have made her smile back had things not been quite so fraught.

"What do you think of my war room?" He gestured about him, to the tables draped with painstakingly detailed, hand-drawn maps, covered in tiny lead soldiers. Little tanks and gun placements, and soldiers painted in non-camouflage colours, presumably to denote civilians, also stood abut the place. Giant arrows showed the movement of the different players in the battle, and complex diagrams of military manoeuvres hung from the walls. There were books too - Caesar, Xenophon, Napoleon, Churchill - books on or by military leaders throughout the ages. Sun-Tzu's Art Of War lay on top of a pile of books of military histories and fiction, and what looked close to a hundred little coloured pieces of paper marked different places within the texts. Sasha nodded slowly.

"It's ... very impressive."

"Thankyou." Silver sat down on a high-backed, stiff chair beside one of the tables, and crossed his legs precisely. "I never leave here now. Not really. This is the centre of operations for my battle against the enemy." He leaned forward suddenly. "You know that the rebels have brainwashed my second in command? He's with them now, fighting against me. But we're making headway. Creating inroads." He smiled. "Killing lots of people. We'll get him back. Destroy the rebels. Tame the city again. It helps when people make our job easier by surrendering to us like this. I'm obliged to you - in a sense. Hence me having you brought down here, instead of sending you straight off upstairs. "Are you rebels?"

"No." Sasha shot a glance across at Amber, well aware that that was exactly what she wanted to be. A rebel, fighting back against Tribe Fury. It was what she would be doing, if not for Eden. "We're new to the city. We came in to trade, but we got trapped here when the fighting started. We couldn't do much except hide because of the baby."

"Good." Silver nodded thoughtfully. "Good good. Because obviously if you were rebels I'd have to have you executed. I think the original plan was to have them all hung, drawn and quartered, but it's not exactly practical doing it that way."

"I'd... imagine not." Trying not to look ill, Amber managed a very wobbly smile. "So... what is going to happen to us? To all of us?"

"Retraining. Eventually. The child is too young for school, but all new recruits have to learn our ways. Our rules. Sadly our training programme has been rather diminished of late. Fighting wars gets in the way. Still, there's plenty of time; or will be, once the rebels are all dead."

"Yes." Sasha nodded, unconvinced and hoping that it didn't show. "Good."

"Er... yes." Trying to inject a little more conviction into things, Amber smiled humourlessly and echoed his reply. "Good."

"Indeed." Silver bounced to his feet, eyes shining just a little too brightly to be reassuring. "Indeed. So. In the meantime, until the war is over, you'll stay here. Under guard, but comfortable enough unless you give us reason to suspect you of disloyalty. Because then we'd have to have you executed, obviously."

"Obviously." Suddenly Eden felt very heavy in Amber's arms. She lifted him closer to her heart, and tried not to let her hands shake. Silver smiled at her indulgently.

"An attractive child. He'll look fine dressed in our uniform in a few years."

"Thankyou." Her grip tightened automatically, but Silver didn't seem to notice her distaste. He merely nodded, as though acknowledging a genuine gratitude.

"Would you like to stay awhile? See how the war is being fought? " He seemed to be anticipating an answer in the affirmative, for he carried on talking without bothering to wait for a reply. "Here we have my finest troops. You'll see how they're pushing against the rebels? Notice how many buildings have been destroyed, in both the two neighbouring sectors. That's to prevent the enemy from taking shelter. We've relocated all loyal civilians. The Independents, and any who have aligned themselves with the rebels, have to be considered legitimate targets of course." He smiled placidly. Sasha and Amber exchanged a look.

"You... must devote a lot of time to the war," pointed out Sasha. Silver nodded.

"Like I said, I rarely leave this room now. And how could I? Wars need command centres. Need to be run. Led. Shaped. Otherwise what do you have? Chaos. Madness. Dysfunction. Disaster." He shook his head. "No, my place is in here, leading the way. Commanding the troops."

"Deciding who lives and dies," put in Amber, unable to stop herself. He nodded briskly at her, like a teacher pleased with a good point made by a student.

"Exactly, yes. I decide who dies. Who is captured, who is executed. Which streets are destroyed, which food supplies cut off, which tribes scattered to the winds. As I said, I am the king. The leader. The supreme autocrat."

"But you said that you had a second in command," pointed out Sasha. Silver nodded.

"Brigadier Racha. My second in all things. He did much of the day to day running of things, but with him gone..." He gestured around him as though to indicate that everything was left to him alone now - but it seemed as though the gesture also indicated the evidence of his madness, and how that was also a result of the pressures caused by Racha's disappearance. Amber nodded, forcing a smile.

"So you're all alone now?"

"Not quite alone. Not quite. I have my advisors, my battalion commanders, my men. But command has always been lonely. By its very nature. By its very meaning. I have alliances though. Other tribal leaders who understand some of my pressures, my problems. Some. My friend who guards my office for me, and watches the state of the streets down below. He makes things a little less lonely. He promises to help bring the rebels crashing to their knees. War makes men, you know. War forges men, into something more. War creates the future. My friend has shown me that."

"Great friend." Amber kept her voice low. Sasha nodded bleakly. Silver just smiled.

"You're probably tired," he said at last, finally able to see past his own fiery crucible. "My men will take you to one of the guest rooms. You can eat. Sleep. Do whatever you wish to do. You'll not leave the hotel until the war is over, I'm afraid. It's simply not safe. Certainly not if you're unarmed, and I can't allow you to have weapons until you're with us properly. After the training, and the teaching, and the testing. In a few weeks, perhaps, you'll be out there, patrolling the streets and helping to mop up the survivors. Until then, rest. Read our leaflets, Acquaint yourselves with some of our preliminary level rules. And keep away from the windows."

"Yes. Sir." Sasha tried to stand to attention, but to Amber, used to seeing him play the fool, it looked clumsy and inappropriate. Silver didn't seem to mind. He nodded his head in acknowledgement, and waved an arm at the guards to take the new recruits away.

"Oh. By the way." Stopping them just as they reached the door, Silver raised his voice. They looked back. "If you try to escape, or show signs of disloyalty, or suggest in any way that you may have come in here under false pretences, you will be shot. Both of you. The child will never even know your names. Good day."

"Good... day." Amber let her voice trail off as the guards marched her away. So they were in for indoctrination, retraining. The possibility of being sent out into the streets with guns. She didn't want that. She didn't want any of this. She wasn't even entirely sure why she had wanted to come here now, with the immediate dangers to Eden removed, and so many of the tensions and discomforts of the moment vanished away. But it was too late to worry about any of that now. All she could do was to see where this next step would lead.

The room was comfortable; a typical hotel room in many ways, although there was no running water, and the sheets had gone from the bed. To make up for the uselessness of the taps there was a large plastic tank of water beside the door, and three or four metal bowls obviously supposed to serve as cups. The rest of the décor was more traditional; several paintings were still hanging on the wall, and there were highly decorated lamps in all four corners of the room. Needless to say they didn't work, but they had not been broken. Even the bulbs were still in one piece. Sasha looked about as soon as the guards had left, and nodded appreciatively.

"I think this will do very nicely. Do you think we should have tipped the busboy?"

"He didn't bring our luggage up." Amber sat down on the bed, and settled Eden there. He was still asleep, and made little snuffling noises that made her heart feel odd. It reminded her again of why she had chosen to come here; because this little life deserved not to have to live in a ruin, with gunshots always threatening to come ever closer. She hadn't been able to think of anything else to do. That was something that she was going to have to live with.

"You alright?" Sasha went over to one of the windows, but they had been boarded up with uneven slats of wood, and he couldn't see out. Amber watched him, wordless for a moment. Finally she nodded.

"Yes, I think so. I just... all of those things that he said. I don't want to go patrolling the streets with a gun in my hand. I don't want Eden to grow up thinking that all of this is normal."

"Maybe the rebels will have won by then."

"Maybe." She didn't sound very convinced. "It's all so crazy out there. Doesn't seem as though anyone will ever win. It never does. We get rid of one lot, and another lot turns up straight away."

"Never had guns before though, have you. Never will again, with a bit of luck. Hang in there, Amber. It'll all turn out okay in the end."

She smiled fondly at him. "You know, when you say it like that I believe you. I don't know why."

"Because you're basically an optimist at heart. Like me." He sat down beside her. "It'll be okay, Amber. We'll be okay. All of us. Eden won't have to grow up in Tribe Fury, and you won't have to go out there wielding a gun. Just give it time. And a little faith, hey?"

"Yes." She turned back to Eden. "Faith. Sounds easier, somehow, when I can't hear any gunfire anymore. I'm sorry, Sasha. You shouldn't be here. I don't know what made me crack like that. I just couldn't cope anymore. It all got too much, like it never has before."

"You've never had Eden to worry about before. Nobody could blame you for what happened, Amber. Nobody but you knows what it's like to be you, out there, with a baby, not knowing what--" He broke off. "Well. Knowing that there are people out there who you care about, and not knowing what's happening to any of them. Makes me glad I've never made any close ties in the places I've travelled through." He smiled faintly. "Except with you."

"Yes." Her eyes had a faraway look, and of course she was thinking of Bray. Somehow she seemed less broken than before though; as if, each time, it became a little easier to think that he might be dead. That was a natural healing process, he supposed, although in these days, when there was so much death, when they had all lost their parents and so many of their friends, who could tell what a natural mourning period was? How should it progress? He just knew that he didn't want to risk being nothing more than a rebound for her. And that meant not knowing how to respond to her now. He settled for smiling, and standing up again.

"Want to see if there's anything to eat?" he asked. "Silver promised us something, and since nothing was left here with us, there might be some stores in one of these cupboards. Worth looking."

"Yes!" Her sudden enthusiasm made him smile; they had both been for far, far too long without food. Too long hiding from the fighting, unable to go in search of stores with Eden to think about. He began to ransack the cupboards.

"Okay... we've got powdered soup... Not sure how to make that unless you fancy starting a fire in here to boil some water, but we'll think about that in a minute. Instant noodles? Ah ha!" He held something up, looking triumphant. "A tin of beans and sausages! Now doesn't that make you feel right at home?!"

"Beans and sausages. After I moved into the Mall, I think I must have gone for months with nothing but that to eat. It's incredible just how many tins were made."

"Given how many there are still left, and the fact that nobody's made any since before the adults died, yeah, it is pretty incredible." He shrugged. "Still, tastes okay, doesn't it."

"Maybe we can make a fire in the fireplace." Checking that Eden was unlikely to fall off the bed, she went over to the fireplace. The remnants of a fire were still there, and somebody had left some pieces of coal and wood in the little decorative coal scuttle beside the fireplace. More than enough to heat through some food, she decided, and began to arrange some of the pieces. "Got anything to light this with?"

"I think I still have some matches somewhere, yes." He checked his pockets, and produced a little waterproof box. "Would madam like to move aside?"

"Just give them here." She took the box, and lit the fire quickly. Sasha set some water to boil straight away, and after opening the tin, stuck it straight in the fire to heat up. They sat together, with a bowl of drinking water each, to watch their impromptu meal beginning to bubble.

"Just like proper home cooking." Sasha mixed some of the powdered soup into the boiling water, and gave it a frenzied stirring. Amber laughed.

"My dad was a great cook. He wouldn't let anything powdered into the house."

"Really? Your childhood was missing something, you know. You can't quite beat a meal that only takes three minutes to cook."

"These days I don't care much either way." They shared the beans and sausages as the soup simmered, then drank it as quickly as they could. Amber winced.

"I suppose a burnt mouth is better than an empty stomach."

"Usually, yes." He stretched, feeling peculiarly satisfied, no matter what the uncertainties of their situation. "I hadn't realised how hungry I was."

"I certainly knew how hungry I was." She went back over to sit beside Eden, and yawned powerfully as she did so. "Good grief, listen to me. We've not long woken up."

"You haven't slept properly in days. Neither of us have. If you want to sleep, go ahead. You're safe now, Amber. Really safe. You can sleep for as long as you like. And you can have a hot meal when you wake up, too. When was the last time we could be sure about that?"

"It sounds wonderful," she confessed, and without even thinking about it, she lay down beside her son. "Really wonderful. Hot food. Now if only there was hot running water, as well."

"I'm sure we can scare up a shower or a bath eventually. Tribe Fury must wash." He sat down on the bed as well, on the other side of the sleeping child. "He'll need to bath, too, or he'll wind up getting nappy rash, or bed sores, or whatever they call it."

"I know." She yawned loudly again. "Thanks, Sasha."

"Thanks?" He seemed surprised. "What for?"

"Oh, you know. For coming with me. This would seem a whole lot worse if you weren't here as well."

"Oh. That." He shrugged and smiled fondly at her, even though her eyes were closed and she could not have known what his expression was. "I couldn't have left you, Amber. Not to come here. Not to go anywhere. I couldn't ever leave you." The dreamy smile faded slightly, though the look in his eyes didn't change. "I won't ever leave you. Not ever again."

But by then she was asleep, and she didn't hear a word.

Silver swept half a dozen of his little toy soldiers from the surface of a table, and threw them away across the room. He couldn't remember which side they had been on as soon as he had thrown them away, but that didn't matter. They were gone now. They were irrelevant. He reached for his walkie-talkie, and barked out a few orders to the head of operations in sector ten, then turned to change his orders into toy soldier map manoeuvres. A knock at the door didn't make him look up, but he did manage to take the time to call out.

"Come in if you have to. Stay out if you don't." The door clicked open.

"I'm sorry. I know that your work here is vital." Grinning with all the sincerity of a good actor playing a rôle, the Guardian joined Silver by the table. "I just hoped that you could give me some kind of an update on events. Any news of the rebels?"

"The usual. People dying. People advancing." Silver barked out a few more orders into his radio, then looked up. "Was there something specific that you were wondering about?"

"Specific? Not necessarily." The Guardian successfully composed his features into an expression of only the mildest concern. "I was just wondering if there might be an update on Bray. His whereabouts. Any new reports or sightings? "

"Bray?" Silver didn't look at all interested. "Didn't I have him executed? Rebel, saboteur. Led a gang against some of my men a while back? He was captured, and I remember signing his death warrant."

"He escaped," filled in the Guardian, with a faint trace of irritation that as usual went unnoticed. Silver, as self-possessed - and self-obsessed - as ever, never seemed to truly process any sign of disrespect. He believed that everybody loved him, all of the time. "When Racha was tempted away, remember?"

"Bray brainwashed Racha?" A flicker of something showed in Silver's eyes. "Well then he'll have to be killed, won't he. No, no sign of him yet, but we'll get him. You can watch the execution if it bothers you so much. Was there anything else?"

"You're very kind." The Guardian forced a smile. "Um... Were those new recruits I saw being brought in? The young family."

"Yes. What of it?" Silver's mind had already drifted away from the conversation; his monumental ego only allowed a limited time for the affairs of others. He moved a few more pieces on his board, then delivered a few more orders to his scattered troops. Watching it all, the Guardian couldn't help but be impressed. Silver was unhinged, impossibly big-headed, and hugely deluded about almost everything - but he was one hell of a tactician. Underneath the fractured mind was an impressive intelligence, and a real military ability.

"You really do keep all of this going, don't you?" he realised aloud. Silver looked up, flashing, however briefly, a warm and genuine smile. He was very good looking, and once upon a time he had known how to use his smile to great effect. Now that troops and rebels and wars were all that truly occupied his mind, such things had long ceased to matter to him, but for one brief second the boy of old was visible. The boy who had been to dances; courted girls; juggled three dates on the same night. The boy who had made his mother's heart melt every time she had looked at him. His eyes flashed with a sudden hardness that owed less to the years of military training, and more to all that had come since.

"I am the leader," he proclaimed, in an immensely serious voice. "The Lord General. The King. I rule everything in this city."

"Yes." The Guardian nodded, understanding now. "You keep everything going. Keep everything moving. It's because of you that this war is being fought the way it is. Without you there'd probably be chaos."

"There would." Silver nodded. "Great chaos. And chaos is the opposite of the military way. There must be order. Rules. Regulations. There must be somebody in command."

"Oh, quite." The Guardian wandered closer, looking over the maps, and the books, and the many little hand-drawn diagrams. It looked like chaos, yes - but it wasn't. Not a bit of it.

"You were asking a question." Changing the subject with sudden speed, Silver began prowling around a second table, studying the many toy soldiers with a frightening intensity. "About the new recruits?"

"Yes." The Guardian's mind worked as fast as Silver's, and he didn't need any time to turn his thoughts back to the previous subject. "The new recruits. What will happen to them?"

"Training. The usual. Just as soon as I can spare the time and the men to get the training programme back on track." Silver paced around the table, frowning at it from all angles. "Why?"

"They haven't been executed then?"

"No." Silver eyed him curiously. "Why? Do you think they should be?"

"Oh, I doubt it, Lord General." The Guardian beamed as he spoke the title, well aware how Silver liked to hear it. "I just wondered if they were still alive. I thought that I recognised them. I might be wrong, but I was thinking that they might be useful to have around. Certainly for the time being, anyway."

"Yes. Well. They'll stay here in the hotel until I tell them otherwise. They're safe upstairs in one of the rooms."

"Upstairs." The Guardian nodded thoughtfully. "Right. That's all I wanted to know, Lord General. Thankyou. For everything."

"Everything?" Silver was no longer paying anything like full attention, which was exactly what the Guardian had anticipated. He smiled thinly.

"Yes. Everything. Goodbye, Lord General. It's been... interesting. Very... interesting." But Silver was no longer listening.

The Guardian left the war room in a cheerful mood, a jauntiness in his step that hadn't been there before. So Amber hadn't been killed; so she was still alive, right upstairs. That might prove to be useful some time soon.

"The Lord General does not wish to be disturbed," he told the guard on the door. "Under any circumstances. Understand?"

"Yes." The guard was never sure whether or not to refer to the Guardian as 'sir'; but he knew that an order from Silver was not something that should ever be questioned. "Under any circumstances."

"Good." The Guardian marched smartly away down the corridor, heading back up to the main part of the hotel. Behind him the guard watched as he disappeared out of sight, a strange sense of unease troubling his mind. He wasn't sure that he trusted the Guardian; but he didn't dare risk the consequences of disobeying an order from Silver. Instead of opening the door, he rested his head against it and listened hard. Inside he could hear the chatter of conversation on one of the walkie-talkies; the familiar, reassuring sound of Silver going about his work. Commanding his troops. Winning their war. The guard smiled, satisfied now. Everything was alright. Everything was as it should be. And without another thought, he settled himself back into position.

Walking away from the hotel felt like the longest walk of Bray's life. It had been some time before Ebony had managed to get him to move. He had lain in her arms like a heartbroken child, and she had wondered if perhaps he would stay like that forever; but in the end she had managed to make him listen to her. She had got him to stand up, made him turn away from the hotel, had practically dragged him away down the alley that had brought them both here. She felt all the time that there were eyes watching their departure, but if somebody was standing at one of the hotel windows, and had seen them leave, he or she seemed in no hurry to send anybody in pursuit. Ebony tried to close her mind to the idea that there was anybody there, but she could feel her pulse rate soaring. The sooner they put the hotel far behind them the better - but Bray had other ideas.

He was walking slowly. Hellishly slowly, as though his feet were lead weights. She pushed him, she cajoled him, she swore at him. It made no difference. He was like a man in a trance, with no awareness of anything, except that every so often he would stop and look back. She dragged him on again each time, trying to get through to him with her encouragements and her pleadings and her hopeless attempts at reassurance. Amber will be fine; the baby is okay; it's not what it looked like with Sasha. Bray showed no response to the comments, but when at last they rounded the corner and the hotel was gone from sight, he stopped looking back, and let her push him onwards a little faster. He didn't speak, barely looked aware of his surroundings, stumbled occasionally on obstacles that he didn't see. She kept him moving though. Heavy footed and slow, unresponsive and miserable, but mobile at least. Just about.

For Bray the walk was something he thought about only in snatches between thoughts of all that had just happened. His discovery that Amber had given birth to a baby boy; his desperate, exhausting dash to stop her from surrendering to Tribe Fury. His failure. The sight of her walking into the hotel, Sasha's arms around her, Bray's baby son held between them for all the world as though Sasha was the father. It all flashed through his mind like a mixed up film looping in fast forward. He wanted to get angry; furiously angry. He wanted to throw things and break things and hit things, but he couldn't seem to stop his feet from walking on along the street. Couldn't seem to find his voice so that he could yell out his rage. Instead he dug his nails into his palms until the blood began to run, and imagined every brutal, violent act that he could perpetrate upon any member of Tribe Fury he might find. The knowledge that he could never bring himself to hurt anybody that way didn't help him to feel any better, and he found himself only simmering all the more. By the time they arrived back at the makeshift headquarters that had been their on-off home for some weeks, he felt as though he were burning at several hundred degrees. An explosion seemed imminent - but whether it would be into rage, hysteria, or mindless violence, he really didn't know. He just knew that something had to happen. His current catatonic misery could surely have only a limited life.

The headquarters was quiet; few enough people were there. They were still all out fighting, as they had been without a break since the explosion at the power generator beside the hotel. Only a few wounded lay about, listless and unmoving, and a few guards patrolled the more exposed places. Ebony tried to make Bray sit down, but he went past the others, into the building and on through crumbing corridors. The office where Archer governed the food rations and guard shifts. The kitchen where they tried to make their pitiful food stores into something remotely edible. The room where they had stored their weapons and ammunition. It was almost empty now; just a few cartridges were strewn about on the floor, and several parts of a disassembled rifle lay in a discarded heap. Bray stared at it all, not really processing the sight, then walked on again. He felt as though he were looking for something, and never quite finding it. Probably because he didn't have a clue what it was.

He stopped walking when the corridor reached its end, at a fire escape blocked with rubble. Here was where they had thrown all their rubbish, in heaps in front of the unopenable door. Cans, boxes, plastic wrappers, spent cartridges, bottles, as well as apple cores, cheery stones and scattered cabbage stalks. There was an impressively evil smell emanating from it all, and a black, rotten ooze that had spread itself over the floor. Bray kicked at it, watching it spatter over the walls, then started on the rubbish. The cans made a satisfying noise as they smacked against the metal door, although the rest of the rubbish didn't co-operate nearly so well. Half-heartedly now he kicked at the rest of it, scattering it thoroughly about the corridor's dead end. He could feel the emotions building, although he didn't know what they were yet. He didn't know that until a misjudged kick hit the wall instead of an empty cardboard box, and he felt pain flare sharply in his foot. That was when he finally snapped.

He started with the kicking, more violently than before. Cans and boxes flew higher than his head, and the rotting organic rubbish stuck to the walls and the ceiling. With every kick he felt his rage grow, until his feet were a blur to his half-closed eyes, and the rubbish was flying like flocks of frightened birds. With a last, violent kick that sent a spent cartridge flying straight through the glass of a nearby window, he spun about on a high of pure, unadulterated rage, and punched the fire door hard. It rattled on its hinges, and he punched it again, with the other fist this time, then kicked it so hard it felt almost as though his foot might break. A dull clapping slowed his wild attacks, and he glanced back over his shoulder. Racha stood there, his uniform dramatically spattered with mud and blood, but his blond hair as immaculate as ever. Presumably he had a specially tailored helmet, or had put out an order that no dirt was to spatter him from the neck up. Bray glared at him, the fury within him now built to a very satisfying level. If it showed on his face, Racha didn't notice it; or more likely he didn't care. He merely smiled.

"Having fun, Bray?"

" Shut up." He could hardly spit the words out, and the gruffness of his voice surprised him. It was the first sound to successfully break out of his throat since his furious berating of Ebony back at he hotel, and he would never have recognised it as his own had he been called upon to identify it. Racha's smile was more of a smirk now.

"Now now. How's that going to help? I saw Ebony. She told me everything. She seems rather upset, and I'll tell you just what I told her. Amber's gone. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. We'll get her in the end, and your son, when we've won the war - so you get back out there, put her out of your head, and you fight." He smiled with more of his usual warmth, so that his black eyes gleamed softly. "Be a good boy, hey? No more melodramatics, or running off on suicide missions without my say so. Understand?"

"Why you--" Bray started forward in a fury, just about ready to try beating Racha to a pulp. He threw a punch, but the brigadier dodged it easily, catching the racing fist on its way past, and twisting the arm that followed it. Bray found himself spun neatly around, and slammed hard against the wall. His head bounced off again with a resounding thump, and Racha smiled unpleasantly. For once there was no trace of flirtation in his face or his voice, and still holding Bray's wrist, he emphasised his point with a sharp pressure on the bloodied knuckles, so recently used to beat a tattoo on the solid metal fire door. The other hand gripped Bray's neck, pressing him heavily back against the wall.

"Never try that again." Racha's voice was like ice. "Never. Understand me?"

"Get off." Bray was still angry, but the fire was muted now by Racha's obvious superiority of position and strength. His struggles were futile. The Fury rebel grinned at him with a glimmer of his more usual humour.

"You want Amber back, you'll do as you're told. She's safe in the hotel for now, but there's no telling how long that will last. If Silver's people win, she could be sent away to a retraining centre, and I can't be sure that I know where those are going to be from now on. Besides. If Silver wins, I'll probably be dead, so I can't help you anyway. You'll probably be dead too. So... the only way to get Amber back is to win this war." He released Bray, and patted him gently on the cheek. "So get back to the line and rejoin your unit. Are we clear?"

"Yes." Bray's fury was burning in his eyes, along with humiliation and hatred, but he fought the urge to strike out at Racha again. Instead he walked away from him, back down the corridor, back outside; back along the roads that would take him to where he had left Salene and the new recruits. Ebony was waiting for him just out of sight of the headquarters and she fell into step beside him. She didn't speak, but the expression in her quiet, deep eyes was enough to tell him that she knew what had happened. Ebony always seemed to know what was going on.

"Ebony?" They had been walking for some time before Bray spoke, by which time they were nearly back at his former position on the line. She looked across at him.

"What?"

"Don't talk to anybody. About what happened. Please?"

"Me?! Who would I talk to?" She put a hand on his shoulder. "Bray... saying that it's going to be okay would just seem trite at the moment, but we're going to survive this, and so is Amber. I don't know what's going on with Sasha, but whatever it is... it'll work out. Eventually. Listen, Racha knows Silver. He's good at out-thinking him; he's proved that. He can second-guess him, like they've got the same mind more or less. If everything carries on the way it has been, then no matter how outnumbered we are we've got a good chance. A really good chance. It'll all just take time, that's all. Just time."

"Maybe." Except that it wouldn't just take time; it would take lives, too. Ebony never seemed to appreciate such things. For a second he put his hand on hers, as it rested on his shoulder. Then he sighed. "Come on. We should hurry. I know I don't make much difference to the way that the fighting is going, but I'd like to see what's happening."

"Yeah." Letting her hand fall away she followed on at his side, like a little echo of his darker temperament. Even the sound of her footsteps sounded reassuring somehow. Bray didn't think he had ever been happier to have somebody beside him. And somehow that thought destroyed all sense of reassurance, and made everything seem more tumultuous still.

Lex leaned back and wiped the sweat from his forehead, leaving trails of grime in its place. He hadn't been this hot since before the bad weather had left everything cold and damp. Digging was hot work though; digging, scraping, probing for hidden compartments behind walls, dragging up flooring, moving furniture. Bray had thought that there were guns hidden here somewhere, in this big, deserted place where he had once met Danni. Lex had been amazed by the idea, but time had taught him to trust Bray, even if he was an unspeakable annoyance at times. His head was usually screwed on right, so if he thought this was a possibility, Lex was going to see it through until the end. Even if that did mean splinters in his fingers, knots in his muscles, cracked and torn nails, and a very sore back.

"Ow!" KC's hammer and chisel had slipped again, and this time he had scraped a good sized piece of skin from the back of his hand. Chloe went to clean him up with some of their precious drinking water. Lex swore under his breath. Blood was the only thing they were getting out of this. They certainly weren't getting any guns.

"How long have we been searching now?" Exhausted, exasperated, and now also in pain, KC threw his hammer away and glared up at Lex. The older Mall Rat shrugged, looking as if he really couldn't care.

"Counting yesterday? About fifteen hours in all."

"And this isn't that big a place." KC stood up, and gestured about the room. "Wouldn't we have found something by now, if there was actually something to find?"

"Not necessarily. This whole place is a secret annexe, after all. Why shouldn't it have another secret annexe of its own?" He sighed. "But it's pretty bloody well hidden."

"I guess it had to be." KC stretched ruefully and picked up his hammer once again. "Okay. So you're some government guy who's got to hide a bunch of guns. Where do you put them?"

"Somewhere where they'll be hard to find if you don't know about them, but easy to get at if you do." Lex scowled. "And somewhere we won't think of looking, obviously."

"That's 'cause you're thinking too hard." Chloe laid aside her bottle of water and looked up at them both, amused by Lex's glower. She would, to him, always be the very little girl who so often got in the way. "Seriously. The only reason somebody is going to be pulling this place apart is if they know what they're looking for. So the guns are going to be in a place you'd never look. Aren't they?"

"I suppose that does make sense." Lex's frown grew. "But how do we know where the last place we'd look is? I mean, where's the most unlikely place?"

"Where we haven't looked yet?" KC stared about. The evidence of their work was everywhere, showing all of the places where they had looked - the flooring ripped up, the plaster hacked away, the holes in the ceiling. Lex shrugged.

"There isn't anywhere we haven't looked. Not really. There can't be."

"There has to be, if Bray's right." Chloe had always had a typically childish belief in the virtual infallibility of the older gang member, particularly Bray and Amber. Lex sighed.

"Yes, I know. But where? There's no basement. No attic. We've checked under the floors, in the walls. Where else-?" He stopped. "Chloe, you might just be a genius. Speak up a little sooner next time."

"You told me to shut up and stay shut up," she pointed out, without animosity. He glared.

"Yeah, and you always do as you're told."

"Does this mean you've thought of something?" She looked excited, in the hope that what she had said might have inspired him to come up with some new theory. "Really?"

"Maybe." He nodded. "I mean, I suppose there is somewhere else left to look, if you think about it."

"Lex?" KC's round face lit up, partly with interest, and partly with delight that his old hero might be about to solve the mystery. Lex said nothing, however; he merely walked over to one of the many holes knocked into the interior structure of the building, and bent to pick up one of the heavy blocks that made up the inner layer of the wall. The plaster that had covered the blocks had been hurled every which way, but the blocks themselves remained undamaged. They were too tough and heavy not to have done. With a faintly smug grin, Lex laid down the block in the middle of the floor, pulled his hammer and his chisel from his belt, and delivered the most powerful blow that he could muster. The block cracked - and with a second, less forceful blow, it broke open. Within the hollow space inside, wrapped in an oiled cloth, was a squat, black handgun. He whistled.

"Bloody hell. Didn't really think I'd be right."

"Amazing!" Delighted, KC set to work on another block, finding an identical gun inside it. "How many do you reckon there are?"

"Could be as many as there are blocks." Lex looked around. "There's a hell of a lot of them. We'll have to be careful. I should think the place has been built so that taking out this layer won't make the the building fall down, but we'll have to be careful anyway.. Better be safe than have a building fall on your head."

"I could go for help," offered Chloe. "Luke and Jack might have some ideas about shoring the place up, and they'd be extra manpower." Lex shook his head, rather vigorously she thought.

"No." He spoke forcefully. "No, I don't think so. Luke, Jack, Trudy - I trust them, sure, but we can't get to them without running the risk of the Badlanders hearing. I'm not sure if that's a good idea. I just don't know if I trust them. I don't know why, and I'm not sure when I started thinking this way. When Craig didn't want to help rescue Bray maybe. I don't know. I just don't want them to know about all of this. Not yet."

"Fair enough I guess. You know them better than we do." KC broke open another block, to reveal a pair of hand grenades. He wasn't sure that he wanted to know how they had been baked inside a brick. "But this could take days on our own."

"Michaels and Tai-San are standing guard outside. They can come in and help; we don't really need them on watch. Meantime we've got work to do."

"But if we don't trust anybody, what are we going to do with all these weapons?" asked Chloe. Lex shrugged, then flashed her the sort of merry, carefree grin that she hadn't seen in some time.

"I don't know," he admitted, with an odd burst of cheer. "But we'll work it out soon or later. We always do in the end."

As Lex conducted his search and recovery mission, outside in the street the city was changing again; or, rather, the battle that was shaping it did. It was hard to be sure of at first; the subtle differences in tactics; the manner in which the battle was being fought. Where once Tribe Fury had attacked with a razor sharp precision, and an expertise far beyond their years, now they seemed uncertain. They made ill thought out strikes, withdrew when victory might almost have been certain, and carried on fighting when retreat would have made far greater sense. Still they outnumbered their former colleagues, and the rebel Furies could not take so great an advantage of the new state of affairs as they would have liked. But if the tide was not turning, exactly, it was moving at the very least. The rebels took less of a battering; suffered far less casualties. In return they inflicted far greater damage than before. Bray noticed the difference almost as soon as he returned to his post. The fire bombs didn't come so often; the snipers were no longer such a curse. Slowly, inexorably, for the first time since the fighting had got underway, the rebels began to advance.

Tribe Fury didn't understand it. Their instructions had come from Silver all along; perfect, precise instructions, leading them on to glory. Now the radios that had once brought them their orders gave them nothing but static and dead air. They struggled to match Silver's cunning or warped brilliance, and with each unit now making their own battle plans, there was no longer any unity between them. The commanders of each battalion tried to agree, as they argued over the airwaves, but even military discipline had its limits. Without Silver they were at a loss.

They tried to get to the hotel, but nobody would allow them in to Silver's private domain, and not even his highest ranking subordinates dared risk his displeasure by breaking his order to be left in peace. They couldn't even claim to be worried for his safety following his long hours of silence, for when they listened outside the door of his war room, they could hear his voice inside. Always he demanded to be left alone. To think. To plan. To prepare, and the pleas to him to begin giving his orders again fell on deaf ears. The others tried to find another leader, however temporary, from amongst them, but to no avail. None of them could lead the others, and each attempt fell apart. The future of the war, it seemed, lay in increasing chaos.

And things went from bad to worse. A disastrous strike on the main body of the rebels saw half the attacking squad wiped out. A sneak attack on a different point along the front line lost a second squad their commander and his two deputies. The rebels inched their way forward, Silver remained incommunicado, and the Independents, even with their untrained forces and bare handful of guns, fought back with greater strength all the time. The Badlanders led one raid that saw fifteen members of Tribe Fury killed or injured, and a good cache of weapons commandeered. The Furies didn't know whether to be angry or embarrassed first; but it was increasingly obvious that whatever else happened they had to stop the rot. Had to win back some lost ground, or make a better, more concerted strike at their enemies. They just couldn't seem to work out how to do it. Military training, no matter how intensive, no matter how complete, couldn't make a tactical genius out of an ordinary man; and none amongst the Furies save Silver had what it took to oversee a war. But somebody thought that he did.

The Guardian took great pleasure in seeing Tribe Fury take its defeats. He laughed secretly to see the wounded limping back to the hotel; to see the commanders coming in to plead, once again, with Silver; or rather with his closed door. To see them going away again, having been forced to leave him alone in his war room, their requests for an audience denied. They were talking about replacing him, but none of them were up to the task, and he laughed at that too. There was plenty to laugh about, as far as he could see. A tribe like the Furies, smug and self-satisfied, so certain of their own strength and glory, deserved to be taken down a peg or two, and he was glad to be in a position to enjoy it all so fully; but that didn't stop him from knowing what the next step for him should be. When next the commanders came - some ten days after Silver had radioed his last order, the Guardian met them in the lobby of the hotel.

"We're not here to see you." Cold and stiff, Colonel Scarlet tried to step past the Chosen leader. The Guardian smiled patiently.

"Nothing has changed," he told them. "The Lord General Silver is still not seeing anybody. You'll have to go away again, just like all the other times, and go back to your mistakes and own goals."

"The Lord General Silver will see us." Colonel Black, the second of the Fury commanders, spoke with even more ice than Scarlet. The Guardian smirked, hiding the worst of his sarcasm, and only letting a little of it show.

"Like he did all the other times, you mean?" He shook his head. "You must know by now that Silver isn't going to let you into that room. But he does let me in."

"You?" Colonel Green, the third of the commanders, had none of the stiffness and ice about him that the first two displayed with such relish. Instead he sounded scathing. The Guardian favoured him with a most indulgent smile, then turned his eyes sharply away to look at the others instead.

"Yes," he said, quietly and confidently. "Me. He lets me in there to speak to him, and he tells me things. All kinds of things. I think I can persuade him to pass his orders on to you through me. I can't promise of course. Some sort of... fatigue... must have befallen him, to have made him neglect his duties in such a way. But I think I can get him to talk. Why don't we try it?"

"He doesn't have the Lord General's ear." Colonel Green still sounded disbelieving. "Why would he? He's just some stranger who was lucky enough to find shelter here. Why would anybody confide in him?"

"Because General Silver and I have a lot more in common than you might think. He likes to talk to me about his work. We've spent many an hour together in his war room, looking at the maps. That was before his withdrawal of course, but I think I can persuade him to let me in." The Guardian, who had long been hiding behind the image of a reasonable, spiritual man, smiled gently, and composed his features into the very epitome of innocence and harmlessness. "It can't hurt to try, can it?"

"Probably not." Colonel Blue unslung his rifle, and although he did not point it at anybody, still he made clear his threat. Colonel Orange nodded.

"They're right. It can't hurt to try, and this might get things working again. We might not be in any immediate danger of falling to the rebels, but at this rate we're going to lose an awful lot of ground - and an awful lot of men, too. The last week has shown that none of us can turn things around again. Not when Racha is leading the other side. It's like fighting Silver. If there's a chance we can get our commanding officer back, we've got to try it."

"Maybe." Black looked around at the others. "We could go with him. Stand outside the door. Maybe the Lord General will even agree to speak with us again."

"Perhaps." Scarlet didn't look convinced, but as Orange had said, they really didn't have anything to lose. He nodded. "Is everybody agreed?"

"Not agreed, no." Green shrugged. "But willing to go along with the consensus. Green Company has lost nearly a quarter of its men in the last ten days. Most of them should recover in time, if the medics do their job right, but in the meantime we're severely undermanned. The rebels backed us into a trap. Us. Green Company have hardly lost a battle since our cadet days. It's embarrassing."

"Highly embarrassing," agreed Blue. "Blue Company lost three men yesterday to the Independents. They came at us with stolen Fury guns, and they killed three of my best sharpshooters. Independents. This has got to stop."

"Then I truly hope that I can help you, gentlemen. Perhaps, if fortune smiles upon us, the great Zoot will lend his guidance." The Guardian smiled beatifically, but the five commanders just glared.

"If you're going to help us, do it," growled Black. "Don't ramble on about your peculiar gods."

"As you wish." Still smiling happily, the Guardian led the way inside the hotel. The guards on duty by the stairs, and by the door of Silver's war room, snapped to attention as the group passed, snapping off well schooled salutes at their colour-coded superiors. The Guardian knocked smartly upon the door.

"Lord General?" he called. "It's me. Jaffa. I was wondering if I might have a word?" A grin crossed his face, and he looked back at the others. "Well that's hopeful, isn't it."

"I didn't hear anything." Scarlet wasn't sure what was going on, but he knew that he didn't trust this smiling, be-robed blond, who claimed to be on their side and yet had never even tried to get his hands dirty at the front. The Guardian raised an eyebrow.

"He said hello to me," he said calmly. "Try listening a little harder. Lord General? May I come in for a moment?"

"I thought I heard something that time." Orange was frowning in concentration, but if the others had heard anything they gave no sign of it. The Guardian nodded graciously at Orange.

"Colonel, I do believe you're right. And it wouldn't do to keep the Lord General waiting, would it." He raised his voice. "Lord General? I'm coming in alone. I have a request from your men." He pushed open the door, ignoring the stony faced guard who stood beside it. If there had or hadn't been anything to hear from inside the room, the guard would have known about it; but rules forbade him from speaking to superiors without permission, or of questioning their judgement, and whatever he knew remained in his head alone. Before any of the others could complain in his stead, the door clicked shut again, and the Guardian had gone.

He re-merged some ten minutes later, to a corridor of hushed expectancy. Colonel Green had been waiting right by the door, and he tried to see past the Guardian into the room beyond. The Chosen leader foiled him with one casual, apparently coincidental, step to the side, then pulled the door shut with an innocent smile. Everybody stared at him, save for the guard, who remained staring fixedly into space. Such indifference rather stung the Guardian, who made up his mind to have the faithful retainer sent off to the front line at the first opportunity.

"The Lord General sends his apologies," he announced, with the air of a court messenger making a grand announcement. Green scowled.

"I didn't hear anything," he muttered, though his disbelief now lacked conviction. He was too eager; too hopeful for a change of direction from his leader. The Guardian looked unoffended.

"No reason why you should have. It's a thick door, and we weren't standing right beside it. You might be able to hear him if he raised his voice, but most of the time it must sound as if there's nobody in there at all. Anyway, he apologises. It all became too much for him. He says that he never before stopped to think that he was only human. But now he's ready to try again. He plans - at least at first - to issue his orders through me. The pressure might be less that way. He doesn't feel that he can constantly give different sets of orders over the airwaves anymore. So don't expect to hear from him directly. Straight away, at any rate. In the meantime, he thinks that he has a workable strategy. He wants a strike that'll put them all back in their place. Something to make the Independents crawl back under their stone, and hopefully force the rebels back a step or two. Are you with me? With the Lord General?"

"Just like that?" Green still sounded scathing. "We hear nothing all this time, and then ten minutes with you and everything is fine again? And we still have no reason to trust you."

"The Lord General trusts me," proclaimed the Guardian, in the voice of true command. "And you trust the Lord General. Do you want to win, or don't you? Perhaps you'd like to explain your feelings to Silver himself - if you're brave enough to try entering his room without his permission?"

"It is all rather unorthodox," complained Black, choosing to ignore the suggestion that one of them try to enter the war room. Blue shrugged.

"Unorthodox is allowed, in measure. In the past it's even worked to good effect. I think we should try this."

"I can't imagine Silver ever having a breakdown." Green didn't look convinced, and the Guardian raised golden eyebrows in a look of haughty shock.

"Breakdown? Who said anything about a breakdown? He's tired. He's needed time to rest, to think, to plan new strategies that might bring this skirmish to an end more quickly. It's been hard for him since his second in command left. But a breakdown? That sounds like mutinous talk to me, colonel. I don't think I'd like to be standing so close to the door and saying things like that."

"I-- Well I didn't mean--" Green shook his head. "The Lord General knows that I'm loyal. I've known him since years before the Virus came."

"Good." The Guardian drew himself up to his full height, and let his mane of golden hair, and his pristine white robe, emphasise his regal standing. "Then you'd best listen to the General's orders. You have a lot to do today, gentlemen. General Silver expects me to report back favourably this evening. Are you onboard?"

"Yes." Orange didn't even need to think. Blue was only a second behind. After a moment Scarlet and Black also nodded their agreement. Only Green hesitated, one eye on the door. He was willing it to open; wishing for Silver's own word on all of this. But the door remained closed. He nodded.

"I'm in. So what are the orders?"

"Come upstairs, gentlemen." The Guardian was beaming, delighted with the way that things were going. Everything was moving according to plan. "I have a set of instructions for each of you."

"I can't believe how badly things have gone without Silver's hand to guide us all." Blue sounded forlorn, apparently failing to understand that, at only sixteen years old, it probably wasn't to be expected that he should be a faultless tactician in his own right. Tribe Fury didn't think about age. It was an irrelevance. The Guardian smiled reassuringly.

"Well everything should be fine now," he told them, glad that none of them had bothered to ask just what it was that had gone on in the war room; what exactly he had said to Silver to bring him back into the fold. Those might be very awkward questions, for at least one particular reason. He gave silent thanks for the rigidity of their military minds, and kept his smiles turned inward. "Now listen carefully. If this is going to work, it has to be done right. Then by this time tomorrow, Tribe Fury will be well on their way to taking back every scrap of land. The rebels won't know what's hit them."

"Sounds good to me." Colonel Black began to lead the way back down the corridor, heading for the stairs. "They've been having it their way for far too long."

"Oh don't you worry." The Guardian's brain was sparkling with different outcomes and scenarios. "Believe you me, gentlemen. Everything is about to change."

The rebels were getting over confident. Racha saw it, but even he couldn't be everywhere at once. Everybody had seen their fortunes change; seen their struggles getting easier. The constant bombardment of missiles was now not only less constant, but also lacked accuracy. Everything was beginning to go their way, and with over confidence came lack of care and a gradual crumbling of discipline. There was no time for drill when they all had to be constantly on their guard, but as time went by they were spending more of their time standing around doing nothing. Racha hated it. He didn't like the incompetence of the enemy. It was too hard to second-guess. Their movements had become impossible to predict. And through it all, the rebels grew lax, particularly the newer recruits and press-ganged soldiers, who had never had any proper training. Their advance became too easy, and Racha became progressively more concerned. He wasn't sure if he was worried that they were headed for a fall, or were being deliberately lulled into a false sense of security, or if he was just upset that his great game had ceased to be quite so entertaining - but he knew that he wasn't happy with things as they were. He executed a pair of raw recruits whom he caught smoking on duty, chatting in a gossipy fashion when they should have been on guard, but even that didn't seem to make the others shape up. Some of them were even talking of joining up with the Independents for one last push against Tribe Fury, to finish that war once and for all, the mere suggestion of which made his blood boil. Them! Crack military troops - and a few press-ganged civilians - joining forces with a jumbled collection of renegades who didn't even seem to know how to use the few weapons they did have in their possession. Besides; he didn't want the war over. He didn't want a peaceful city once again, with the enemy defeated or destroyed. The whole point of starting this rebellion was to have a war, and to keep it going for as long as possible. He considered executing the person who had first suggested the merger, but since it had been Bray he decided in the end to let it pass. Bray probably had his own reasons for wanting the merger. Friends amongst the Independents most likely, for whose safety he was undoubtedly concerned. Racha didn't understand him. He was always worried about somebody. Amber, her baby, his friends, the Independents - it didn't make any sense to Racha, who didn't really even worry about himself. He was goading Bray about it all one evening, when the day's fighting seemed to have come to a premature end in a barrage of clumsy fire from - Racha thought - Orange Company. Colonel Orange was one of the more capable commanders, but apparently even he couldn't put together a good sortie anymore. Racha wondered if he was worried about Silver, but put the thought from his mind. Silver had been his best friend once upon a time, but that had been before the Virus. Before everything that had happened then and since had sent the pair of them mad.

"So which of these Independents is it in particular that you care about, Bray? Any of the ones that I've met? Or do you have a few other special friends hidden away?" He enjoyed teasing the other teenager. Life was so much more fun when there were people to torture, in one sense or another. Bray didn't answer. Racha grinned.

"I see. It's like that is it? He's made such a big deal out of wanting to find his dear Amber that he doesn't want us to know about all the other Ambers that he has hidden away. How many of them are there, Bray?" A mutter of laughter ran through the other rebels gathered about, but Bray didn't appear to be bothered by that. It didn't matter to him what the renegade Furies thought, or the various recruits that they had pressed into service. Salene smiled gently at him. He knew that she was worried. She knew about Amber and the baby thanks to KC, and it bothered her that Bray had failed to give her a straight answer about it all. He preferred not to talk about; she thought that he needed to do just that.

"Something wrong with your tongue tonight Bray?" Edging closer, Racha nudged him with a foot. "You're not going to be much fun if you just sit there and sulk."

"What would you rather I did? Flew into a rage?"

"Possibly. The last one was entertaining." The rebel leader reached out, catching hold of one of Bray's hands. "They've healed nicely. I thought they'd have been broken."

"Just bruised." Bray snatched the hand away, then realised what a mistake he had made. Nothing goaded Racha more than the attempt to put distance between them. Sure enough that warm, flirtatious smile came back.

"So come on, Bray. Tell us about the Independents. How many of them are you worried for? Are they especially pretty?"

"Shut up." Annoyed, even more so because he couldn't allow himself to get angry, Bray tried to keep his temper under control. Fighting Racha again would be a truly dreadful mistake, and he didn't want that kind of humiliation in front of an audience; but good sense wasn't especially easy. Nothing was ever easy with Racha, but maybe if he thought about other things instead - swimming, basketball, rowing; any of the things he had used to enjoy so much - he could keep himself from boiling over. He just simmered furiously instead.

"Shut up, Brigadier," corrected Racha, only half-joking. "So you don't mind if we wipe out the Independents when this is all over?"

"Huh?" That made most of them look up; the Furies in surprise, the few new recruits who were present in shock, and Bray, Salene and Ryan in horror. Only Ebony didn't react. She had learned to read Racha very well. He smirked.

"What? You didn't think I'd reward them for their rebellion did you? This is a Fury civil war. Civilians are allowed to side with me or with Silver. Fighting for themselves smacks of insurrection, and I don't know that I can allow that. We could herd them all into buildings and set fire to them, or get them all together in a nice empty space and machine gun them. You name it, it's been done before back in the old days. We're not breaking new ground here, you know."

"You're sick," Bray told him. Racha laughed.

"Sick of having nothing better to do than to mow down idiots who don't seem to know how to attack properly anymore. This is turning into a busted flush. I might just as well go after the Independents for a while. They'd probably put up a better fight than Silver's mob have been just lately."

"Depressing, isn't it." Archer never knew whether Racha was joking or being serious, but to him it didn't matter. This sounded like a good plan anyway. "I did hear that there's an old shopping mall that they're using as a headquarters of a kind. Didn't you once call yourself a Mall Rat, Bray? Maybe this mall would be the place to hit at first. Got any special friends there?"

"Leave the Mall alone." It was Ryan who reacted, less able to control himself than Bray, even if he was more placid these days than he had used to be. Archer looked over at him in surprise. Ryan so rarely spoke that it seemed odd to hear him do so now.

"So you're a Mall Rat too are you, Ryan? You've got your special friend here beside you though. Or do you have a few more in reserve back at this mall?"

"Leave him alone." Ebony stood up, stretching her lithe body. "If you must know, the Mall is a depressing, rundown place, filled with a more sorry bunch of losers even than the representatives you have here. A science geek, a pair of hippies, a would-be warrior who couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag, and a mother and baby who are no good to anybody. There was a bunch of children too, but it seems they gave up and ran out. A nest of vipers it isn't."

Racha laughed. "I see. So is it your baby, Bray?"

"No, it isn't." If the mention of babies wasn't enough to make Bray's temper rise, the thought of Brady, Trudy and Martin was. He glowered inwardly, and tried to keep his feelings to himself, but his voice had given him away. Racha raised an eyebrow, and his black eyes gleamed.

"Oh? Sure about that are you? So who is the father? Ryan here? Or this science geek? One of the hippies?"

"No." Bray turned to face him properly for the first time, and had to struggle to keep his eyes from giving away the full extent of his growing ire. Racha grinned on, mockery and amusement filling the handsome face. "Now shut the hell up. Some of us are trying to get some sleep."

"Sore spot," commented Archer, happy to join in with the teasing again. Tormenting a particular victim was always a good way to pass the time. Racha nodded.

"Probably feeling guilty. They like to pretend to be loyal to one woman at a time, these clean cut types. So what does Amber think of this other baby then, Bray?"

"I told you to shut up." He was on his feet before he could stop himself, hot and cold all at once, the emotions that always filled him when he thought about Martin confusing him now just as much as they always did. Ebony rolled her eyes.

"Don't be such a prat, Bray. Sit down."

"It doesn't get to you?" It was easier to turn on Ebony than to let himself get so angry with Racha. Ebony had been the target of his rage so often that it was just another argument for them. It made it easier to focus then. Easier to see through the sudden red mists. Ebony shrugged.

"He'd tell you not to be such a prat, too."

"You're a spoilsport, Ebony." A glimmer of interest showed in Racha's eyes. "So is the baby yours, and you gave it away?"

"Shut up." She spoke with no anger or enmity; just with the same sense of relaxed laziness that she often seemed to turn to everything else. "Now how about forgetting the teasing for a few minutes, and concentrating on something important?"

"Such as?" He didn't give a fig for her opinion, she knew that - but he had developed a grudging respect for her over the course of the war. Her abilities and courage, not to mention her ability to be impressively ruthless, had earned her that much. She winked, already reaching for her rifle, matching his flirtations of earlier as she gave him her studiedly casual answer.

"Such as maybe the tanks that are heading this way."

"Huh?" Archer leapt to his feet, head cocked on one side. In the distance, far in the distance, he thought that he could hear a rumbling, but he couldn't tell yet if it was getting closer. "No way. They'd never use tanks on us. Silver thinks he can win us back. He certainly doesn't want to risk hurting Racha."

"Happy to send grenades and fire bombs, and use automatic weaponry though, aren't they?" Bray trusted Ebony's judgement perhaps more than he trusted anybody else's. "Ebony...?"

"Oh, it's tanks. I'd say three of them at least. Heading this way. Listen."

"Yeah. I hear them." They all could now; a clearly audible rumble. "But Archer's right; they've never used tanks against us before. Not since the invasion. They've always been an option, but they haven't done it."

"Silver wouldn't." Racha was frowning, his eyes almost seeming to look inwardly now. He knew Silver. He knew the way he worked, planned, thought. Silver would never send tanks against him. And yet there was no denying that tanks were coming.

"What do we do?" Archer was gripping his rifle, but no matter how powerful it was, it was no more use against a tank than would be a peashooter or a child's catapult. The others were scrambling up, grabbing their guns, backing away, hoping for an order to retreat. Racha hesitated. Only Ebony still looked calm and collected, almost lazy. She had loved dropping her bombshell, he realised. Had loved throwing it so casually into the conversation.

"Get away from here," he said eventually. "It's too cramped. Get away from the weaker buildings, and find a place where we can launch a grenade attack. Somebody get the recruits out of the way. Damn it, what's going on?!"

"Maybe Tribe Fury got tired of losing?" suggested Ebony. He shook his head.

"No. I don't know. This is something weird. All the lousy planning, like Silver had lost it - then this? Something is very wrong."

"With Tribe Fury? Not really seeing any reason to worry." Ebony collected up a pair of grenades, already beginning to move out. Somebody was herding dangerously nervous recruits one way, and Archer was leading everybody else another. She could feel the ground vibrating now, very faintly through the soles of her shoes. Racha shot her a look, his expression showing no unpleasantness, but for once devoid of all feeling.

"Precision, tradition, discipline," he told her, his voice showing that it was something long learnt by heart. "We're a military organisation. Precision, tradition, discipline. It makes us predictable; or rather, it makes them predictable. That's part of the reason I'm on another side now. They don't have an original thought between them. Give them a leader and they'll follow any thought to the letter. Efficient as hell, and deadly with it. But still essentially predictable. Silver has rules of combat, even if you'd never notice it. I know them. I helped him set them."

"And I take it not using tanks on your own people is one of them?" They were running now, but of course Ebony still sounded casual, almost languorous.

"Yes." Racha tried to remember the last time that things had seemed normal in the enemy ranks. During the fighting leading up to his temporary departure from the front line to recover Bray, as far as he remembered. What could have happened that day to turn Tribe Fury into something so insane? "It's all worded more officiously than that of course, but that's the gist of it. We might be rebels now, but Silver would never see us that way. He'd never believe we'd really betray him, so he'd never send out tanks. I know him, damn it! Either he's gone mad, or somebody else has taken over, and both options don't exactly bode well. I wish I knew what was happening."

"I wouldn't worry about it now." They were running flat out, leaping broken walls and chunks of rubble, heading for one of the thing roads that a tank could not use.

"Now, tomorrow, next week. Got to worry about it sometime." He skidded to a halt and looked back, just in time to see a tank round the corner behind them. He had used them himself in the past, but he had never before stopped to think how inexorable they seemed. How alive, almost, like robots or monsters, tireless, following a scent. He swore softly.

"This way." Archer's voice, leading them all on, rose above the drone of the tanks. They followed him almost like sheep, following him into a tiny alley, out the other side, down another alley. Only then, when the walls seemed so close, when he felt so terribly hemmed in, did Racha stop to think about something. About the tanks coming from that particular direction, causing them to run this way. Their predictable response, of running to the one place where it seemed unlikely that the tanks could follow. Predictable. Just like Tribe Fury. He came to a sudden stop.

"It's a trap!" He knew it now, even though he had no idea where this new strategy was coming from. Not Silver. Not unless he had blown his mind. From somebody new, and imaginative, and ruthless in a way that even Silver had never been. More than ruthless. Brutal. "Get back! Get back!"

They took so long to respond. Archer, ever the soldier, ever the professional, went into retreat straight away. Racha doubted that he knew the reason why, but he did it anyway. The others though; he cursed them. Cursed them for having joined the rebels because they, like him, hated the slavishness, the mindless obedience, of Silver's loyal forces. That streak of independence; that characteristic that made them useful to him, was going to get them all killed now. He shouted at them again, and they started back towards him, slowly at first, then faster. Maybe they were going to make it after all. Maybe. And then he heard the rumble of new tanks, from a new direction, and knew that they weren't going to make it after all.

The tanks smashed through the walls of the alley from both sides, just as a smoke grenade came through the open far end. Smoke billowed up, blew sideways, curled around the tanks and the rubble and the scattering rebels. Racha saw some of them pinned under the falling walls, saw others disappearing beneath the tanks. The tanks didn't need to open fire. They just ploughed through it all. Those who weren't killed, weren't trapped, had nowhere they could go. They were lost to Racha as surely as the dead ones.

"Come on." It was Archer, back at his side. He looked unmoved, for nothing ever shook Archer. Ebony was there too; Luna, Morganstern, Lightning Joe, Ryan, Salene, Bray. A few others. They had lost probably ten men. Ten good men.

"Come on!" Archer was pushing him, something that he would never usually have dared to do. "We have to get away from here. Rejoin with the main body. Who the hell knows what else might be happening along the line right now?"

"Yeah." Racha raised his voice. "Fall out! Head for Station Six. Keep together for as long as you can." He started running then, casting just one glance back, and knowing that even that was one glance too many. The smoke hadn't cleared, and the tanks hadn't withdrawn. One of them turned its gun turret, pointing after the escaping gang, and for one unexpected moment his heart caught in his throat. The tank didn't fire. Someone somewhere must have told it not to. Cursing fate, as well as everything else he could think of that might be responsible for all of this, he ran on after the others. Something had gone very wrong somewhere. Something had changed. It was as if reality itself had seemed to shift. Racha didn't understand it at all, but he resented it as much as he was concerned by it. This was supposed to be his great game. His game. Something he had created and shaped. And how was the world supposed to play his game when somebody else suddenly changed all of the rules?

Lex had felt better about keeping the new armoury to himself when he had seen the change that had come over Tribe Fury. At first he had worried that it was too dangerous to hold the new weapons back when the Independents were so poorly armed; but with Tribe Fury suddenly fighting like inexperienced novices, he was immediately reassured. They didn't seem to need the weapons now. Instead they were finding it easier to steal others, easier to fight back without even being armed in the first place. It was almost embarrassingly easy. He wondered at first if it might be some attempt to fool the rebels; to make them think that Tribe Fury was giving up, or was not as capable as they could be; but he had seen enough of them fall, apparently killed or badly injured, to be sure that this was no ruse. Craig seemed glad to lead his Badlanders in violent raids against Tribe Fury, in clashes that even Lex found unpleasantly vicious. This was no act. It couldn't be. Tribe Fury might be ruthless enough with their enemies, but to allow their own people to be killed just to lull the rebels into over-confidence was too much. Or so he thought at first; until the night when everything changed all over again.

It was when Bray and his companions were running from the tanks, although of course Lex knew nothing of that. When Racha's men were being killed or captured in the confined alleyway, caught between tumbling walls and advancing tanks, with smoke grenades hiding their fates from their retreating colleagues. Lex was sitting outside the Independents' latest headquarters, a small former police station that they had recently liberated from a group of Tribe Fury soldiers. It had been a pleasant day, which made a change from the recent weather, and the night was still warm. He was eating his first really decent meal in some weeks, again recently liberated from Tribe Fury, and watching KC and Chloe squabble like a couple in love. Tai-San caught the direction of his eyes, and smiled up at him.

"You noticed?!" she asked in a quiet voice. He smirked.

"I'm not sure that they have yet."

"They're very young still. Plenty of time for it to turn into anything yet." She laughed softly. "I'll bet your technique was better when you were KC's age."

"When I was KC's age I already had plenty of experience." He grinned lasciviously, and she just rolled her eyes. "Where's everybody else, anyway?"

"Luke and Jack are at the Mall. I don't think Jack has left there in several days now. He's hoping that with the way the fighting has been going lately, it'll all be over soon. He's planning to have plenty of electricity generators and water purifiers ready to help put things back to rights."

"Proper little city builder, huh." It was wonderful just to relax in her arms, he decided, and stretched luxuriously, just to show her how contented he was. She swatted the top of his head in response, just to show that she could stop him from being so comfortable any time she chose. "I suppose Luke's helping him? Weird. I always thought they hated each other."

"They did, when there was a woman in the way." Tai-San smiled like the old woman with decades of experience that she could so often appear to be. "But now they're friends. Just like you and Bray."

"Yeah." Lex tried not to laugh. Goodness knew they had worked together well enough in the past, but he still couldn't help thinking of his long term rival in distinctly antagonistic tones. And they had never even had a woman in the way. Tai-San made as though to swat at him again, but he dodged her easily, and still managed to look lazy.

"This is nice." She settled down into a more comfortable position beside him, and yawned happily. "It's been too long since we were able to relax properly."

"Yeah. Good to think that all those guns we found are just going to go to waste now."

"I was beginning to think that they would anyway. You really weren't planning to tell the Badlanders about them, were you."

"I don't know." He had thought about that a lot since finding the guns, and making the decision that they should at least wait before passing the news on. "Krishnan I trust. I think. I mean, he at least was happy to help me try to rescue Bray. Craig is just peculiar. I get the feeling he's hiding something. Maybe they all are - but at least Krishnan is easygoing with it."

"They speak quietly in dark places, and stop when they think people are walking too close." She frowned. "But they saved your life."

"They wanted me to get them an army together. I don't think they'd have bothered to rescue anybody else." He shrugged, really not sure quite how he felt about it all. "I don't know. Everything was moving so fast at first, and there was so much else to think about. I never stopped to think about who I was working with, and why. It's times like these when I think about Bray, and how he spent all that time finding out which tribe was which, back in the early days. He always seems to know something about everyone. Me, I was fighting, not talking."

"Which is your way. It suits you." She played with the necklace he wore, one that she had made to guard him against the dangers of war. It matched her own. "I suppose you think that he'd know whether or not we can trust the Badlanders?"

"I think he'd have an idea, yes. Craig obviously knows him."

"I see." She nodded slowly, as though thinking. "Then can I make a suggestion?"

"Sure, babe." Apparently he didn't think that he was going to have much interest in whatever it was that she was planning to suggest, so she poked him hard in the ribs to make sure he was awake.

"Ask." She said, with heavy emphasis. He frowned.

"Huh?"

"Lex, the streets are safer than they have been in weeks, and KC knows where Bray is now - or where he was a little while ago, anyway, which has got to be a start. We know he's tied up with the rebel side of Tribe Fury, so you'd have to be careful, but you're not telling me that the great Lex can't get to him?"

"The great Lex, huh?" He had to smile at that. "I didn't think. I mean - well yeah, I guess I could ask Bray. Maybe he knows something, at least. Then maybe I'd have a better idea where we stand. Are the Badlanders likely to play the game fair, or do we have to start watching our backs? That sort of thing."

"Then get started." She smiled at him, well aware that he didn't want to move. "No time like the present."

"I'm comfortable!" He sat up though, enjoying the warm night breeze on his face. "You wouldn't rather be doing something more interesting tonight, given how peaceful it seems to be?"

"Hardly."

"Well I like that!" He made a grab for her, but she rolled neatly away. Tai-San, he thought ruefully, had always possessed great agility and a beautiful turn of speed. He reached for her again, but she slapped his hand away this time, and jumped to her feet.

"Tai-San, babe... I'm not in the mood for funny games. It's not that kind of a night."

"Shut up, Lex." She was listening, and he saw the sudden seriousness of her expression.

"What?"

"I said to shut up!" She cocked her head on one side, then broke her own rule of silence with a sharp whisper. "Listen!"

"To what? I can't--" He broke off. "Sounds like... engines?"

"Powerful engines."

"Not a car though. Too heavy. Too rumbling."

"Too slow," added Tai-San. "Lex..."

"Bloody hell." He was on his feet too now, recognising the noise before she did. Grabbing the rifle he liked to keep with him, even though he had no more ammunition for it, he sounded the alarm as loudly as he could. "Tanks! Everybody up and out! Tanks!"

"Huh?" KC, who had been so engrossed in his apparently pointless argument with Chloe that he hadn't heard a thing, looked up. "What?"

"Tanks, you little idiot! Move!" Lex threw open the door of the police station and roared for the people inside. They came out in a slow, unconcerned wander, most of them rubbing sleep from their eyes. Only Michaels came with any speed. The mention of tanks was enough to make his eyes fill with panic, and his fists clench into little whitened balls. Tai-San put an arm around him.

"What do we do?" she asked. "Where do we go?" Lex shook his head.

"Don't know, don't care. Just get moving. Everybody!" The rumbling was louder now - they could all hear it. Some of them were finally beginning to get the message. "Move out! Split up a bit, but don't go alone. Pass the message on to anybody you see, no matter what side they're on, and keep moving! Avoid anywhere where you can be boxed in, or where the rubble will get you if they open fire. Understand?" He got his answer in a chorus of very uncertain mumblings, and rolled his eyes. "Just get going!"

"Lex..." KC was at his side, watching the others split up and move away. "Tanks?"

"You hear them, KC." Lex slung the rifle over his shoulder. "Come on. The five of us should stick together."

"Are we going back to the Mall?" asked Chloe. Tai-San shook her head.

"Not if there's a chance of leading anybody else back there, no. Come on." She broke into a jog, leading Michaels as gently, but as fast, as she could. He went with her mechanically, but his eyes were fixed upon the buildings behind them, beyond which the rumbling of engines was louder than ever.

"Lex..." began KC again. The older boy nodded. He could see the questions in KC's eyes, but he didn't know the answers to them. He just pushed the boy onwards, Chloe with him.

"I know, KC," was all that he said. It didn't make any sense. All this time with Tribe Fury showing the energy and ability of novices, and now tanks? Of course there was always the possibility that it was some of their own people, who had captured the things - but Lex didn't believe that. He trusted his instincts. Goodness knew they had seen him through more than enough trouble in the past to deserve that trust. Right now they were telling him to run. And so he ran.

And he was only just in time. As they dashed away from the police station; as they put one thin but concealing wall between them and the sound of the tanks, the tanks themselves came around the corner. There were three of them; not the ones that had taken part in the roust of the Fury rebels, but different ones. Just as big, just as heavy, just as unstoppable; inexorable chunks of metal that roared over the ground, cracking the tarmac of the road, and making the buildings vibrate. Lex heard a splintering sound, and knew that it was the fence around the police station. He hurried his little group on even faster, hearing the crunch of metal and wood, and thanking heaven that they had got away in time. How the hell had Tribe Fury known to find them there? There were so many buildings in the city. He didn't think that any of the Furies who had been posted at the police station had got away when the rebels had taken over. Craig had led the assault, and enemies tended not to get away when he was in command. Somebody had clearly passed the message along though, and Lex glowered about it in silence. Just as things had seemed to be going so well. Just as he had been getting the chance to relax.

The sound of a tank shell exploding shattered his thoughts just as they reached their angriest. Stone smashed. Tiles fell. He saw the wall behind him bulge and tremble, and he all but hurled KC and Chloe forward. They crashed into Tai-San and Michaels, and for a second they were all stumbling and trying not to tangle - then they were running on again, and behind them the police station was falling into dusty ruin. The tanks came on; through the rubble, crushing old furniture into unrecognisable, twisted ruins, pushing remorselessly on. Michaels whimpered, and Lex gave him a shove, pressuring the boy into keeping up the speed. Giving into fear wasn't going to do them any good. He glanced back, wondering how much of a barrier there still was between them and the tanks - and saw the first of them roll into view. It mounted the pile of rubble that had been the police station, its gun turret moving left and right for all the world like a head turning about to look. Lex mumbled inaudible, incomprehensible curses, complaints and half-prayers, and hurried the others on even faster still. He hoped none of them would look back. Panic would only make things worse. Then he remembered Michaels.

The boy was already looking back; was already grey, pasty, going into shock. Lex didn't blame him. He had seen kids damaged by fighting before, in the days of the Locos, and even though it wasn't anything that he could really understand, he knew what caused it. Not everybody was like him; he understood that much. Michaels was trembling now though, and his legs could no longer keep up the pace. He began to fall.

"What the-?" Turning to look at him, slowing her pace involuntarily, Tai-San looked back. She saw the tank, its gun pointing directly at them; saw the other two tanks beginning to roll into view. Her eyes met Lex's, widened in horror, and he flashed her a breathless, apologetic grin. There wasn't much left to do then. Catching Michaels up in his arms, he ran for cover, yelling at everybody to do the same, hurling himself over a wall, around a wall, through a doorway; no longer aware of direction. Behind him the tank fired, and a blossoming, blooming flower of flame and smoke erupted in the middle of all of the buildings, obliterating a wall; shaking the ground; showering Lex and Michaels with stone dust until neither of them could breathe. Lex ran on, the vibrations of the ground making his legs ache. He couldn't see where he was going, for his eyes were full of white dust, but he wasn't prepared to stop. Another shell exploded behind him, and the tanks roared on. He changed direction; heard KC from somewhere off to his right, encouraging Chloe onward. Another voice yelled, but it wasn't one that he recognised. He stumbled. Another shell came, and another, and he was running through falling stone then; just ahead of collapsing timbers; running for his life as everything began to fall apart around him. He threw himself through a glass-less window, dropping Michaels, dragging the boy on again so violently that he almost tore his arm from its socket. They were both choking, covered in stone dust, half deaf from the explosions and the destruction, and more than half blinded by the infernal dust. Hands caught hold of Lex, and he tried to fight them off; then heard KC's voice, and Chloe's, and let them pull at him. They hurried him on, as before he had hurried them, acting as his eyes and his ears as they ran onwards down the road. The sound of the tanks was fading now, and there were no more explosions. No more shells. No more stone dust. Lex could breathe again, and though his eyes were tearing fiercely, his vision was beginning to clear. He coughed.

"Everybody okay?" It was the most that he could manage to say, and even that didn't come easily. A murmur sounded out around him. Tai-San was holding him then, so tightly that it almost hurt. He wasn't about to complain.

"Thought we'd had it then." KC was shaking slightly, not meeting anybody's eyes. Chloe looked grey and ill. Lex nodded. There was no point making light of it. These were just children; but they were not the sort of children who needed to be protected all that much. Not anymore.

"Yeah." His voice felt hoarse, and every word hurt. "That was close."

"They've upped the stakes, haven't they." Tai-San's voice sounded faint. He didn't like to hear her so subdued.

"Yeah." It was all that he could say. There was no point in making denials that nobody would believe. "I think the rules are different now."

"You think they've attacked anywhere else tonight?" She was looking right into his eyes, but his vision was still too blurred to be entirely sure of the expression on her face. He nodded though. The question at least he could react to.

"I'd bet on it. No more playing it coy."

"Then do we break out our new armoury?"

"You think it'll do any good against tanks?" He began to push them all on again, not trusting in the tanks to give up that easily, even if it did sound as if they had done their work for tonight. "I don't know. Not yet. We have to find out what's going on first."

"And then?"

"I don't know, babe." He wanted to rub his eyes, but he knew that would only make things worse. He wanted the ringing in his ears to stop, and the taste of dust to go from his horribly dry mouth. Wanting didn't get anything done though. Speeding up, he kept pushing them all on, away from the scene of their close call. Away from the tanks and the rubble and the clouds of spreading dust and smoke. They had to join up with the main body of the Independents, wherever they all were. There was safety in numbers; safety where there were guards posted, and where there was a store of pilfered bombs that might just be some good against tanks. Might be some good. He didn't know. Frankly he had been hoping that he wouldn't have to find out. It didn't take a tactical expert to know that things had changed tonight though; that the fighting had shifted gear with a hell of a jolt. The store of bombs might just get some use after all. If they were all very lucky, the blasted things might even work.

Once it had begun everything started to snowball. The Guardian enjoyed his new role immensely, and even though the rest of Tribe Fury didn't understand why Silver should have chosen to confide only in this virtual stranger, the results were such that soon they ceased to care. The long days of hopelessness and helplessness following Silver's lapse were over, and with the Guardian as go-between the orders came thick and fast once again. The rebels, both the former Furies and the Independents, didn't know what had hit them. Every day Tribe Fury pushed back a little harder. Every day the tanks rolled out, and even though they were never a main part of the action again, the threat of their presence was enough to scatter the enemy. Little pockets of resistance fell every day, trapped in ingenious pincer movements, or beaten into submission by less subtle means. Mostly it was just twos and threes who were taken, but the numbers mattered less than the fall in morale. Racha spent his days raving like a madman, furious that his great game had been turned to disaster, and apparently increasingly frantic with worry for Silver. The Badlanders kept taking out groups of their volunteers, only to return more often than not with their unit in tatters. The Badlanders themselves always managed to survive, Lex noticed with some dark amusement. It was just the volunteers who were killed, injured or captured. Not that it mattered. All of a sudden none of them seemed to have a chance anymore.

On the fifth day after he had taken command, the Guardian was in the war room, talking in a loud voice for the benefit of the guard outside the door, discussing tactics with Silver. Silver, as was rather the way of things now, had nothing at all to say on the matter, but the guard outside wasn't to know that, and the Guardian was good at holding one-sided conversations. He agreed loudly and enthusiastically with everything that the silent general failed to say, and even laughed dutifully once or twice, as though at jokes. All a part of the grand illusion, he thought to himself as he played out his performance. All a part of the necessary foolery. So far it seemed to be working well enough. Silver's orders not to be disturbed, unheard by all save the Guardian, just as with everything else that came from the war room these days, was followed scrupulously. Everything that Silver said was obeyed in such a manner, which of course made things much easier for the Guardian. Not for the Furies were questions about the sudden change in tactics; about the sudden loss of military precision. About the sudden chaos. Instead the colour-coded colonels who came in every day to get their orders nodded smartly, and marched away to carry the orders out. They sent their respective units out in wide, grand, sweeping manoeuvres; in apparently insane jabbing attacks that somehow always came off; in rowdy, mob-handed routs that were undeniably a contrast to anything that Silver had ever ordered before. And still they asked no questions. The Guardian felt sure that he could have them all running down the street yelling in praise of Zoot if he felt inclined to try it; but he didn't. Not yet. For now none save the Fury leaders knew of his involvement, and he was content to keep it that way.

Bray and the others were at a loss to understand any of it. Caught between the newly ferocious Tribe Fury, and a leader of their own who was now in a permanent rage, they were without real leadership themselves. Archer took over, in his role as deputy, but his rigid mind was completely incapable of keeping up with whatever mercurial madman now governed Tribe Fury. His conventional plans and manoeuvres were completely outclassed, and each patrol that went out, each unit that struggled on the front line, took a constant battering. Only their almost endless supply of ammunition kept them fighting, and even then it was only a case of fighting back when and where they could, almost always on the enemy's terms. Racha grew more and more violent, ordering sudden, insane sorties with the hotel as the objective, none of which came to anything in the end. The sentries were back up on the roofs, and travel from street to street was once more almost impossible. The Guardian, happily ensconced in his war room, knew nothing of Racha's anger, or Lex's growing depression. He wouldn't have cared anyway. All he was interested in was the next stage of his plan. The next step towards getting the city under his control once again. The way it was supposed to be.

The problem with a war of this sort, as he knew only too well from his schooling as well as from his own recent experiences, was that it could go on almost forever. Even with sentries on the roof, and tanks patrolling the streets, there would still always be ways for people to get about. It might take them time to find the ways; to find the desperation and the determination that were necessary, but they would get there in the end. They would fight back, because that was what people did when they were under attack. When their friends and colleagues were dying, when their own lives were threatened, when their homes were in danger. The last thing that the Guardian wanted was a guerrilla war. The last one had gone too badly for him, and it bothered him that the architects of it - so far as he knew - were still alive out there somewhere. He hadn't seen their bodies, so he didn't believe that they were dead; and that meant that they were still dangerous. Bray, Ebony, Lex. Jack, who had been sent away from the city as a dangerous influence, but had managed to return. Luke, who had betrayed the Guardian once before. Any number of former Fury soldiers who had the potential - to say nothing of the firepower - to make this war last indefinitely, if they could only find the foxholes, and the safe pathways, and the proper degree of outrage. Something had to be done to prevent that. To scupper the Independents, to clip the rebel Furies' wings. To prevent the guerrilla war from ever beginning. In that way, he felt sure, he could have the entire city under his command in a matter of days. Silver, for all his efficiency, his skill, and his undoubted intellect, had been months away from being able to make that claim. The Guardian had had his own plans in place all along.

It began with a young girl of no more than eleven or twelve; a pretty, waif-like creature with frizzy hair and an angelic smile, who knocked on the door of Amber and Sasha's hotel room. They let her in, surprised to see her, for in all the time that they had been at the hotel they had seen no one but the boy who replenished their water daily, and their food stores once a week. The girl entered the room shyly, and introduced herself as Megan. Silver had asked to see the two new recruits, she said, and she had been detailed to keep an eye on the baby for them whilst they were downstairs. Amber wanted to refuse, but she knew that there wasn't really much chance of that. What Silver said went, and she had agreed to that, implicitly, when she had entered the hotel.

"We'll be back before you know it," claimed Sasha, and Amber nodded her head unwillingly.

"Yeah."

"The baby will be fine." Megan was smiling, waggling her fingers at the little boy, who was far too young to really care about her efforts. "I look after lots of them. There are always babies in the city, and most of them come under Tribe Fury's domain these days. Don't worry about him."

"It'll probably only be for a few minutes," pointed out Sasha. Amber nodded again.

"I know. I've just never been anywhere without him before." She held him for a second longer, feeling his familiar shape and weight, then sighed and handed him over. Megan beamed.

"He's beautiful. Don't worry, you'll be back soon. The Lord General never sees anybody for very long."

"And you'll be here when we get back?" asked Sasha. Megan nodded her frizzy head.

"Right here waiting for you." She waved Eden's little hand in farewell, and Amber smiled regretfully. It was several moments before Sasha could coax her from the room. They both looked back at the baby before the door shut, but everything seemed fine. Everything looked as it should be.

If Megan was phase one, phase two took place elsewhere in the city. A small boy named Eric, who had been playing in the Mall with the other members of Trudy's increasingly large crèche, slipped out during one of the rowdy games. Nobody saw him leave, and nobody saw him clamber out of the building, through one of the secret entrances that he saw Lex and the others use almost daily.

In another part of the Mall, Jack and Luke were arguing. It was a regular occurrence, though these days their fights were not the angry, tense kind that they had been in the past. Their previous animosity, a part of their rivalry over Ellie, had disintegrated in the need for co-operation, and in the face of the gradual, mutual understanding that they had reached. Ellie was gone, and there was far too much else to think about these days than old rivalries and older girlfriends.

Today the argument was about copper wiring, which Jack thought was a perfectly reasonable thing to argue about, and Luke thought was faintly absurd. They had one and a half feet of the stuff, and for Jack to finish building another wind powered battery charger, they needed at least another four inches. Luke wanted to try using something else, Jack was determined to go out and find exactly what they needed, and before very many minutes had gone by they were arguing energetically about who was right, where they could find the extra copper wiring, and whether or not it would be feasible to try some kind of substitute. The argument ended the same way their arguments always ended; with Luke laughing, Jack looking affronted, and Luke producing some of the dwindling supply of chocolate that he kept for that express purpose. They shared it, Jack thought wistfully of Dal, and before very many minutes were up they were ready to go back to work again.

"Did you hear something?" Looking up from the workbench, Luke cocked his head on one side. Jack nodded.

"Sounded like somebody coming in. Bit early for Lex though."

"Lex hasn't been in for two days. I doubt he'll come in today. You know the reason why." Luke crept over to the door of Jack's workroom and peered out. After a moment Jack joined him.

"Because of Tribe Fury regaining the initiative? Just when we thought we were getting somewhere. Bloody typical." Jack could see nothing of interest going on outside the workshop, so he turned back to his bench and sat down. "Shame there aren't more of us. And that we don't have more weapons."

"Well there's two more of us here who could be out there helping fight," pointed out Luke. Jack didn't bother answering. Neither of them was the gun-toting type, and hoped to stay that way for as long as possible.

Get back over here," he said instead, holding out a wrench for the other boy to take. "I need a hand with this--" He broke off. "Luke, are you listening?"

"Ssh." Luke's blue-haired head was low now, as though he were peering at something of great interest, and wished to remain unseen himself. He gestured wildly with one hand, and Jack crept over to join him.

"What is it?" he asked. Luke hushed him with more frantic gesturing, then pointed. When Jack looked past him to see what was going on beyond their little room, he saw that Luke's face was deathly white, and that his fingers, now gripping the wall edge, were beginning to tremble. Then Jack saw what he was looking at, and he understood the reason why.

There were twelve teenagers in the lobby of the Mall, led by a small boy whom Jack recognised immediately. Gary? Larry? He couldn't remember, but he knew that the child was one of Trudy's young charges. He looked different now though, for before he had been dressed in ordinary clothes - and now he was wearing the deep blue robe of a member of the Chosen. The twelve teenagers around him were dressed the same way, their feet in uniform sandals, the two tallest amongst them sporting hair dyed the same colour as Luke's. Jack tried to swallow, but found that he couldn't.

"The Chosen," he hissed in the end, and sat down heavily on the floor. "What do we do?"

"What can we do?" The other boy couldn't move; couldn't stop staring at the twelve new arrivals as they began to spread out around the lobby. "They're taking over, Jack. I don't know why, but they're here to take over."

"The children." Jack's head dropped into his hands. "Think about it! If they can hold this place, with all those kids here, then the tribes that those kids belong to will do anything that the Chosen want. Anything. We have to--"

"What?" At last able to tear his eyes away from the sight of the Chosen, Luke managed to walk a few shaky steps away from the door. "They'll kill us without a thought! They'll certainly kill me, and they'd have no reason to keep you alive. Jack, there's nothing we can do. We can't get word to Trudy, and even if we could, what's she going to do? Evacuate all the kids in the next minute?"

"I guess not." Jack looked up at his friend, seeing in the troubled eyes that Luke had never really got over whatever horrors the Chosen had thrown his way. "But we've got to do something!"

"That kid. Larry is it? He knows about us. He knows we work in here, and he'll tell them. We have to hide."

"That's no problem. There's the air duct. We can get up into the attic or something. But then what?"

"I don't know, Jack." Luke was trying not to shake, but couldn't seem to manage it. He was thinking of the Guardian. If the Chosen were here, then the Guardian was still alive. He had been consoling himself for so long with the thought that his old tormentor was gone, that now he found he could barely consider the possibility he was not. He hated the Chosen. He hated the Guardian. He hated what he had been amongst them, what they had done to him, and everything that they stood for. He wanted to fight them off; all these twelve new arrivals in their pristine blue robes and close-shorn heads. But he couldn't stop the powerful shivers that threatened to make his teeth chatter loudly enough to give him away. He didn't resist when Jack pulled him over to the air vent. He was shaking too much to put up a fight. By the time Larry - Harry? Barry? Jack still couldn't remember - had led the Chosen into the workshop, there was no sign that Jack and Luke had recently been there. Larry/Harry/Barry didn't care. For all he knew they had gone outside, in which case they had no hope of getting back in. The Mall was secure. Phase two of the Guardian's plan was complete, and back at the hotel the Guardian himself was preparing to begin phase three. It was by no means the most complicated, but he had an idea that it might be his favourite one yet.

The guard was outside the door of the war room, just as he always was. Sasha was certain it was the same one who had been there the day Silver had given his little pep talk about training and initiations, and the chance of one day being awarded full membership of Tribe Fury. He wondered if it was always this one guard on duty, and if he was ever relieved by anybody else. He offered the guard a cheery smile, which went completely ignored, then shrugged and knocked loudly on the door.

"You're to go straight in," announced the guard, his eyes conveying the clear message that he would rather not be admitting the pair at all. Rather put off by the glare, Sasha dragged his smile out for another nervous showing.

"Is he in a good mood?" he asked, nodding towards the door - or more precisely the Fury leader on the other side of it. The guard scowled.

"Who? Don't know what's going on anymore. Nobody's seen Silver since you did that last day. Everything's nuts, and you didn't hear it from me." He shouldered his rifle, doing his best to swallow his doubts and look professional. "Now get in there. Orders are, you go straight in."

"Then we'll go straight in." Amber pushed the door open, conscious of the fact that the guard immediately turned his back to them, the door, and whatever was beyond it. She walked on through, rather wishing that she could stay outside with the guard. She had no wish to listen to Silver's meanderings, especially when her young son was begin cared for by a complete stranger, no matter how efficient and apparently sweet.

The room was different to the last time. The books of histories and the military biographies; the old accounts of battle tactics written by ancient commanders and generals, were stacked now at one side of the room, and the diagrams of military manoeuvres had gone. The maps were still there though; a mad, colourful jumble now, of arrows, and symbols and scrawled handwriting. Piles of little toy soldiers lay here and there, some smouldering gently from where they had recently been set on fire. There was no sign of Silver.

"Hello?" Sasha walked further into the room, looking expectantly behind tables, and even underneath one. "General?"

"In the stationary cupboard," a voice answered him, although it didn't sound like Silver's voice. Amber thought that she recognised it, but she was thinking about Silver, and didn't make any kind of connection.

"General--" she began, but the cupboard door swung open then, and she saw, not the tall and impressive figure of Silver, with his dyed hair and glittering smile, but the arrogant blond she had hoped never to see again. The Guardian, who had kidnapped her, tried to blow up the Mall, tried to have Bray burned at the stake. Her eyes narrowed.

"What are you doing here?" Her voice was like ice. Sasha was rather taken aback.

"You two know each other?" he asked. The Guardian laughed, and walked forward a few places to size this stranger up.

"They tell me you're called Sasha," he commented, with just the right note of laziness in his voice to suggest that he was above mere introductions, and mere mortals like Sasha. "You're what? Her new love? Because frankly, Amber, this isn't going to be nearly so much fun if you and Bray aren't the item you used to be, and it would be a shame to have to kill you after you presumably went to so much trouble to surrender."

"She and Bray are still together," put in Sasha, before Amber could come back with one of her ill-timed attempts to be defiant. She glared at him furiously, and the Guardian laughed.

"You're probably wondering what you're doing here," he said at last, finally tiring of the sound of his own amusement. Amber's eyes spat sparks.

"I'm wondering what you're doing here. Where's Silver?"

"Silver? Oh he had to pop out for a minute or two. I'm sure he'll be very sorry that you missed him. Anyway I speak for him these days, so it doesn't much matter."

"And who exactly are you?" asked Sasha, taking advantage of his first chance to get a word in edgewise. The Guardian quirked a blond eyebrow.

"I am the Guardian," he announced, as though it should mean something to everybody. "Leader of the Chosen, and high priest to Zoot."

"Zoot?" Sasha looked blank for a moment, then nodded. "Oh, right. The one that Ebony used to work with. Bray's brother, yeah? Why does he need a high priest?"

"You'll learn. If you survive, you'll learn." With an effort the Guardian controlled his temper. "My friends, as I said, you're probably wondering why you're here."

"We weren't wondering, and don't call us that." Amber folded her arms, wishing that they didn't feel so empty. She wanted to get back to Eden, and she didn't want to have to deal with this madman any longer. He unnerved her greatly, and she wanted to know what he was up to. What he was planning. The Guardian was always planning something, and it was never of any good to anybody. She wanted to run away from this place, for if the Guardian was mixed up in Tribe Fury, there was sure to be great danger for all of them now. The Guardian smiled indulgently at her, and her blood boiled. How dare he patronise her.

"You're here because I've decided to bring this war to an end," he said, his voice even. "I plan to send a force up against the idiots still fighting us, and you, Amber, are going to be a big part of that. I've already got steps underway to bring the Independents under my control. My next move is against the breakaway section of Tribe Fury."

"What makes you think I'll help you?" Her voice dripping with hatred, Amber was thinking quite seriously about trying to fight the Guardian here and now. He laughed at her.

"Because, my dear associate, you just left your baby in the care of one of my most dutiful young initiates, and quite simply if you ever want to see the child again, you'll do exactly what I say. Is that clear?"

"You're lying." She had gone very pale, knowing that he was perfectly likely to have set such a thing up. He smirked maliciously.

"Want to take the risk? I have a little radio here, and I can have an order with Megan before you can get past the guard on the door just out there. You'll never see your baby again, and I'll see that he - it is a he, isn't it? - gets to grow up the way a child of Zoot's family should. As a proper little member of the Chosen. So what do you say, Amber?"

"I say that you're an untrustworthy creep with an ego the size of Jupiter." Amber tried to keep from trembling, and Sasha took her arm.

"We'll do it," he said, not sure that Amber could bring herself to say the same thing. The Guardian grinned.

"Good. Because really you know, Amber, you're a very important part of my plan. You're going to get the rebels for me. More precisely, you're going to get Bray for me. I won't have Zoot's brother complicating matters again, acting as a symbol; and I won't have these blasted rebels causing trouble either. Kill him or bring him in, I don't care, but he's out there at the heart of all this rebellion nonsense, and I'd rather have him here with me. Or dead. The choice is yours. So you go out there, you get them to take you in, and then you do what needs to be done to keep your baby. And if that means killing every single one of the rebels' inner circle, you'll do it." He folded his white robed arms and smiled triumphantly at Amber. "Well? What do you say?"

"You're a cold, heartless bastard." He couldn't really want her to do all of that. She couldn't do any of it. Be a traitor, use her identity to get at Bray and the others. Betray them to the Guardian. Kill them. She couldn't do it. And yet if she didn't... Her arms felt empty again. Horribly, painfully empty. The Guardian meant what he said, she knew. She could see no way as yet to rescue Eden. No way to stop the Guardian from carrying out his threat to have the child spirited away. She could try to attack the Guardian, but he was too much of a fanatic to be stopped by that. Besides; she was under no illusions about her ability to come out on top if it came to a fight. The Guardian was twice her size, and was probably armed. Even with Sasha to help her she would never be able to win. Her shoulders slumped. What the hell else could she do but agree, and hope that some way to get out of all of this would present itself later? Gripping Sasha's arm so tightly that she all but cut off the blood flow, she nodded her head. It felt as if it weighed several tonnes, and her muscles were so tense that the effort of nodding made her neck stiff and painful. She didn't look at the Guardian. Didn't look at Sasha, or the maps, or the melted, smouldering toy soldiers. She stared at the floor, and hoped that she wouldn't give the Guardian the satisfaction of seeing her cry. The Guardian, however, couldn't have looked more smug if she had broken down in tears at his feet. He had been fairly sure that he was going to enjoy phase three. He hadn't been disappointed. Now he just had to sit back and wait for phase four. That was to be his most favourite of all.

Because phase four was the end of everything.