Chapter XLII – Shield of Light

  Nova found herself gagged and restrained; her arms wrapped around a pole behind her back. At first, she had fought furiously, instinct as much as reason driving her struggles. Panic had filled her, a sick feeling in her stomach, a desperate need to be free. The men who had taken her had watched her and laughed, before departing to carry out Ma’s orders.

  Now she was alone in the dark.

  Why?

  Why had it come to this?

  If only I’d stayed on the Amrita. I could be playing videogames with Sera. I could be working on my machines…. I could be doing anything, but this.

  She felt a sob threaten to take her.

  I don’t want it to end like this. I don’t want all of my life to have led up to this. To dying and being… No. No, no, no.

  She tried to focus her thoughts, breathing in deeply through her nose. And perhaps it helped a little. But that knot of panic, that sick feeling – it wouldn’t go away. And she knew why. Because it wasn’t just blind, irrational panic. Both her emotions and her rational mind were aligned.

  I’m done for.

  Some abstract part of her mind marvelled at how thin the boundary between life and death was. There was something strange about the fact that so recently she had been free to do as she liked, and just one quirk of timing had landed her here. How easily it could have been different.

  What accursed luck.

  And here she was. Alone in the dark. She knew she would probably die. She could almost accept that. But her mind refused to even contemplate what came before death, though the shadow of it dwelt ever at the margins of her thoughts, threatening to overwhelm her. It dwelt in that nauseating knot.

  But she was alone.

  And that surely provided a sliver of hope. Her captors weren’t watching her. They had been hasty in their efforts to restrain her, needing to get on with the task at hand. They must have made a mistake. There must be some way to get free. And surely, she, Nova Reilly, had the wherewithal to discover the flaw in her restraints.

  Just think of it as a mechanical fault: The system – Nova Reilly – is unable to exercise normal functions due to an obstruction. You just need to figure out how to remove the obstruction without damaging the system.

  So, she considered possibilities in systematic fashion. The pole was a no go. While the dorm buildings looked fairly flimsy in their construction, she had witnessed them withstand multiple severe storms. There was no way she was ever going to make the pole budge or break, and besides, she didn’t fancy bringing the roof down on her head if she did.

  That left the ropes she had been bound with as the only conceivable solution. Having identified this there seemed to be two further possibilities: break them, or slip out of them.

  The problem with breaking them was that even if she had the strength under ordinary circumstances – and she was fairly sure she did not – she could get little leverage on them. The pole was quite thick and her arms were pulled back around them, such that her shoulders already felt an uncomfortable amount of strain. There wasn’t really any capacity to yank hard on the restraints in any direction.

  That left slipping out. This seemed the most promising option, if she could just feel her way around the knot. Each of her hands had enough freedom of movement to reach the rope around the wrist of the other, though it was only with enormous strain that she could probe the restraints with more than her pinkie and ring finger. This made for a severe limitation of her ability to explore the intricacies of the knots, let alone untie them. Making matters worse, she always kept her nails short as they tended to break off when working otherwise. In that moment she found herself wishing she had Mu or Ostara’s long nails. They would have provided both a little more reach, and a lot more precision.

  There was no ideal solution to her predicament, but probing the knots, trying to loosen them, seemed the only hope. Even if she could give just one of her hands a little more scope for movement, that would open up further possibilities.

  So, she probed the knots on each side, trying to wriggle a finger into a gap that might allow her to pull away a loop. She was used to working with small and sometimes delicate parts, and had both steady hands and abundant patience for such work, but now – so constrained in movement, and lacking any tools – she felt frustration well up in her.

  She willed herself to focus. Ignore everything, but the task at hand. She was only partially successful, but treating the situation as a system to be fixed definitely helped. Frustration, at any rate, was preferable to the terror and panic that had filled her before.

  She had a moment where she thought she might have attained some small purchase on the knot, but she quicky realised she had only pulled a strand of the rope, not the whole thing.

  But that might be an option. Maybe she could pick apart the rope, weaken it. How long would that take though? How long did she have?

  Still, there was nothing else for it, though she quickly realised she might have gotten lucky with that one strand she managed to pull out. Her lack of nails and severely limited dexterity meant that she could mostly do little more than to fumble with the bulky rope. But she persisted. The very fact she’d managed to pull away that one strand gave her the faintest sliver of hope: the notion that whether or not she had time, the task was at least possible. And the faintest possibility of escape was infinitely superior to its alternative.

  The first, almost imperceptibly dim, morning light was beginning to filter into the dorm when the door swung open. Two of her captors entered, judging by the voices, though she was faced toward the wall and couldn’t see them. They sounded like they were dragging something heavy. They spoke in a strong colloquial dialect that Nova wasn’t particularly familiar with, so she struggled to catch all their words, but she understood enough.

  She understood what the two thuds she heard were. They were depositing bodies. And they knew they were running out of time with the light of dawn arriving. Soon the cover of darkness would be lost to them. Nova could only guess at what that meant for her own timeline, but it probably meant she didn’t have long.

  She twisted her head around as best she could, trying to glean any more information. She glimpsed the black hair on the back of someone’s head, sticking out from behind the divide between bunks, sprawled on the floor, one limp hand stretched out above that head. As she watched a little pool of blood slowly expanded across the floor.

  One of her captors approached, saw her turned head.

  “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said, a sickening grin on his face, as he squatted beside her, “We won’t keep you waiting much longer.”

  Nova did her best to scream obscenities at him, but little but muffled indignation emerged. With a chill down her spine, she felt a rough hand caress the side of her face. She tried to recoil, but there was little she could do.

  “You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?” he sneered at her. “Don’t worry, we’ll make you feel good soon.”

  Nova did her best to convey as much hatred as humanly possible through her eyes. The man just sniggered as he rose once more, looking down on her. She noticed now that in his other hand he held a pistol. They hadn’t had guns before. He made a kissing gesture with his lips, then turned, and in a moment both men were gone, leaving Nova alone with a pair of fresh corpses.

  No sooner had they left, than she began redoubling her efforts to pick away at the rope that bound her hands. Yet, even as she did so, her mind kept returning to the feeling of the man’s hand against the side of her face, the image of his lips puckered into a kissing gesture. She felt the knot inside her return, the rising panic. Her efforts at working on the rope became imprecise, fumbling.

  Focus, Nova, she urged herself.

  But the panic was too great. She couldn’t regain the modicum of calm she had briefly attained before. Time was running out, and the horrendous fate she had tried to ignore kept occluding more and more of her other thoughts, seizing territory within her brain.

  And slowly another option occurred to her. The only other escape. She didn’t even consciously process it; rather it simply wandered, uninvited, into her thoughts, a dark stranger on the doorstep of her mind. Before she fully comprehended it, she was considering the options.

  There were probably sharp objects around, but she had no way of reaching them. She couldn’t willingly stop breathing, but was there anyway she could try and swallow the gag, so as to block her airways? Probably not. Could she bite down on her own tongue? Would blood loss accomplish her goal? A goal her mind had refused to formulate into words, yet one implicitly understood.

  Because she was sure of one thing: with whatever actions remained within her feeble powers, she would ensure that she would grant these monsters, these fucking evil bastards, no pleasure. If her life had led to this moment, led to a premature end, she would not let that end include her humiliation. She would die with pride. She would die spiting these disgusting brutes.

  Her mind toyed with the practicalities of it. Could she achieve it? Would it work? Would she simply injure herself and make everything worse?

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of gunshots. Three isolated shots. Then a minute passed. Distant yelling. Then automatic weapons fire. More shots. Many more.

  There was more light about now. Her time was probably running out. She had made no progress on her bonds. She was uncertain whether her alternative escape plan was even possible.

  Somewhere outside, she heard a scream.

  There was silence. Then the distant sound of quiet, but urgent voices. Then more gunfire. Shouting.

  Her eyes turned to the nearby corpse. The blood was darkening now, appearing stickier and thicker than when it had first flowed freely. Now it soaked into the floorboards.

  Death was now abundant in Port Athur, distributed cheaply.

  As if to punctuate the thought, another scream sounded out.

  Moments passed. Then the door flung open. Her three captors re-entered, one of them now supported by the other two. They moved past her, the door gaping open behind them. They lowered the injured man down onto one of the beds. He let out a groan of pain. It was the man who had spoken third when they first captured her.

  There was a hurried exchange among them, then one crossed the dorm and looked in on Nova.

  “Still with us?” he asked. His voice had less of the sneering arrogance she had heard when last they came.

  She gave no response, once more fixing him with a look of fury and hate.

  Her thoughts raced. Maybe they had tried to strike against Gao’s men and failed. Maybe Gao’s supporters would be here soon, and she would be rescued.

  She tried to listen into their conversation, but again they spoke in an unfamiliar dialect, far removed from Imperial Standard, which was itself only her second language. It sounded like neither side was now on top, at least from what she could glean.

  She was trying to process all this, as the man standing over her turned to his still uninjured companion.

  “Let’s go,” he said – this was clear enough. “Leave him. He’ll live.”

  He turned back to Nova. “Not long to wait now,” he said.

  Nova only noticed the hulking figure behind him at the last moment. Her captors were even slower to notice.

  In the next instant a metal fist erupted from the chest of the man standing over Nova. It struck with such force that she heard the sound of ribs snapping in two. A crimson slurry, laced with bone fragments spilt out across the floor, and across Nova herself, followed by a torrent of blood.

  The fist withdrew and Nova could see straight through the gaping hole in the man in the split second before his broken corpse fell to the ground.

  There was a gunshot, but the intruder seemed unperturbed, moving with shocking speed. A single punch from that metallic arm imploded the man’s skull with remarkable ease. The corpse was half-fused with the wall, a giant crater of splinters and mashed brain marking the point where it connected.

  The injured man called out in shock and fright, but his cries were cut short as a flurry of blows obliterated his body, smearing organs, bone, and blood across the bed, which itself caved in from the force of the blows.

  It happened so quickly that Nova’s mind was racing to catch up. She was now dripping in the gory remnants of her captors, observing their annihilation with detachment. Her mind was simply unable to process what had just occurred.

  The intruder turned to her. A giant of a man, all rippling muscle and tattoos. One robotic arm, another natural one. His green singlet was sprayed with the blood and viscera of his victims.

  He was one of the people she knew best in all the Cosmos, but in that moment her mind resisted connecting this ferocious beast to that name. The two concepts were simply incompatible.

  “Are you alright, Nova?” asked Kal, as he stopped to remove her restraints.

  Even once the gag was removed, she was unable to utter a reply.

  Jiwen’s head was spinning from the news he’d just received. The outsider – Harry – had told him they were leaving Luanyuan. They intended to take Toghrul Yarghunoghul with them. They wanted Jiwen himself to go with them.

  But that wasn’t the big news.

  He had broken off his conversation with Harry upon receiving the news, meekly muttering that he had to tell Shulin. With that he’d gone back inside the dorm. Like everybody, Shulin hadn’t slept a wink that night. She was sitting in a chair reading.

  Shulin had always been a caring, empathetic, and insightful person – more than anyone else at Port Arthur. Jiwen could tell she knew something was up the moment she saw him step back inside. Her eyes went wide, silently asking him what he knew.

  He struggled to say the words. After everything that had transpired that night, it was hard to imagine anything that would still shock Jiwen. Yet, this did. If Port Arthur was crumbling beforehand, this truly seemed like the colony’s end.

  He must have been silent longer than he realised.

  “What is it?” asked Shulin, her eyes imploring him to break his silence.

  “It’s Michael,” said Jiwen.

  Shulin was silent a moment, then she asked, “What is it? Is he alright? He went to check on some of the other dorms…”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Jiwen swallowed.

  “He’s… dead,” he said at last.

  “Dead?” asked Shulin, incredulous.

  “His body was found a short while ago…” the words kept catching in Jiwen’s throat. “Someone… someone stabbed him.”

  Shulin shook her head, as if Jiwen was spouting complete nonsense. “What… what do you mean? Who would attack Michael? Gao… Gao would never…”

  Jiwen shook his own head. “I don’t know…”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “He… he was just here. He talked to everyone when Gao announced the Commandant’s death…”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” agreed Jiwen.

  He looked away from her, trying to gather his thoughts. He glanced back at the door. Harry was probably still out there.

  He returned his focus to Shulin.

  “Shulin… I think I’m going to leave with the outsiders,” he said. “They want me to lead them to the crash site.”

  “Leave?” she said, in a voice that seemed to not quite comprehend what he was saying. “Into the jungle?”

  “To the crash site first,” said Jiwen. “Then off-world. With the Commandant dead and all the chaos… escape won’t be a problem, and our visitors think they can find a way off-world. They intend to take Toghrul Yarghunoghul with them. They offered to take us. They offered to take Michael…”

  Shulin shook her head, her eyes glistening with tears. “We can’t leave everyone here behind. If Michael’s gone…”

  “If Michael’s gone, there won’t be a colony for much longer. You’ve heard the gunshots out there. Between him and the Commandant, they were the only thing holding this place together. Most of our perimeter defences are gone now. Ma’s probably fighting Gao by now… with Michael gone…”

  “I can’t abandon everyone. I don’t care about Gao. Ma is a monster. But there are other people. Innocent people. People discarded by the Empire in this horrid place… we can’t just up and leave them to the jungle or Ma or even Gao.”

  Jiwen sighed deeply before responding. “It’s lost. Even before tonight. I think it was that Blood that doomed us. People aren’t in their right minds anymore. Even I’ve felt its pull – I’m sure you have too. But whatever the case, if we stay here, we will die. Everyone’s too divided. Everything is falling apart – order and trust, yes, but even the physical stuff – the filters, the jetty, the perimeter fence. I doubt we can even go on a week now.”

  Shulin put down the book she had been reading and drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. She looked away. He heard her take a shuddering breath.

  Her voice was soft when at last she spoke, “You’re right, Jiwen. Of course you are. We won’t last. It was always an uphill struggle just to survive here, but this past week – tonight, especially – we’ve fallen too far down to every make it back up again.”

  “Does that mean you’ll leave with me?” asked Jiwen.

  “No,” she said, firmly. “No, I have to stay. Some of the people here are innocent. Someone needs to watch out for them. What about that young boy? Chen Xiaoyu? He’s nothing more than a poor lost child.”

  “I think Fu Yuanjing has taken him under her wing,” said Jiwen.

  Shulin gave a bitter hint of a laugh. “All the more reason to have someone look out for him. And what about Gong Junde? He’s the same age as Michael. Who will look out for him?”

  “But what can you even do for them?” said Jiwen, a hint of desperation slipping into his voice.

  “Probably nothing,” said Shulin, “But I’m sorry: my mind’s made up. I’m staying till the end. I’ve got to try and give these people a chance.”

  Jiwen sighed once more. “You’re a better person than I am, Li Shulin.”

  She smiled his way. “You’re a better person than you give yourself credit for, Zhang Jiwen.”

  He remembered Gao’s remarks. They seemed an epoch ago, but had in truth been spoken barely more than twelve hours prior.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Jiwen.

  “I do,” said Shulin. “Now go. Show our visitors to the crash site. That in itself is a good deed.”

  Jiwen was struck by a thought. “What if we led everyone out?”

  Shulin smiled once more. “It’s a nice thought, but it’d never work. A small group, led by yourself – that has a good chance of making it out. But a big group, with young and old, sick and well… we’ll get eaten alive out there. And that’s if we could even get people organised between Gao and Ma and Fu’s different schemes. Go. I will stay.”

  Jiwen knew she was right. He glanced back at the door.

  “I kind of left them hanging with my answer,” he said, “I should go tell them that I’ll take them to the crash site.”

  “You should,” agreed Shulin. “And Jiwen? I want you to know – really know – that I don’t hold it against you. I think it’s the right thing for you to do. It’s just not the right thing for me.”

  He tried to look sincere and reassuring when he answered her, “I know. I… thank you.”

  He saw tears forming in her eyes once more.

  “You… Li, you’re the last person in the Cosmos who deserves to end up like this,” he said.

  “No, Michael was,” she replied. “But I guess luck was never on our side. This is not a place lucky people end up.”

  “It’s unfair,” said Jiwen, feeling anger now. “For someone like Michael to die in a place like this. How is that just?”

  “Justice never had much to do with it.”

  “I know… I know…”

  “You should go.”

  “I know.”

  With that she stepped forward and wrapped him in a hug. “Thank you for making this dark place just a little lighter. It was nice knowing you.”

  “Thank you, Shulin… for everything.” He pulled away. “Goodbye,” he said.

  She nodded, her eyes still glistening. He could feel his own getting watery.

  “Goodbye,” she said.

  He lingered a moment longer, then turned to head outside. Harry was still waiting there when he stepped out. He looked at Jiwen when he emerged, concern on his face.

  “You alright there?” he asked.

  “No,” said Jiwen. “But we should get going. It’ll be light soon.”

  Harry looked like he was about to ask further questions, but instead just said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Harry and Jiwen moved quickly, but cautiously.

  The sounds of gunshots were increasingly echoing out around the settlement as the glow of the ascendent sun spread across the horizon. They wove between the different buildings, pausing and changing routes several times to avoid the bands of armed convicts moving around the settlement in the diminishing shadows.

  When they reached the meeting place, Kal and Nova were nowhere to be seen.

  “We can’t wait long,” said Jiwen. “Whoever wins between Gao and Ma is going to try and re-establish order once they have. Our window will close.”

  Harry nodded. “I know. But if Kal says he’ll be here, he’ll be here.”

  Harry saw his convict companion was surveying their surroundings nervously. They were tucked between a supply shed and an intact portion of the perimeter, near the gate facing away from the river.

  “Your faith in your companions…” began Jiwen.

  “We look out for each other,” said Harry, “And they’ve never let me down. We’ve been through a lot.”

  A guilty look crossed Jiwen’s face.

  “You are worried about leaving, aren’t you?” said Harry.

  “They killed Michael,” said Jiwen.

  “They?”

  “I don’t know who. I don’t know if it was on purpose, or he got caught up in all this,” said Jiwen, “But someone killed him. And Shulin’s staying on. I guess she wants to try and restore peace.”

  Harry felt there was little chance of that, but he kept his feelings hidden.

  “What’s so important about Yarghunoghul?” asked Jiwen.

  “I guess there’s no harm in telling you everything now,” said Harry. “He took a rap for a murder he didn’t commit. He was a kind of revolutionary leader, I guess. On his homeworld – Yarkan. We got caught up in it all and the new leader of Yarkan was his… lover, I guess? She and his sister asked us to come get him out of here.”

  “Was he innocent?” asked Jiwen. “Actually?”

  “Yes,” said Harry. “I know, because the person that sent us to retrieve him admitted to committing the crime herself.”

  “I guess that’s pretty definitive,” said Jiwen.

  “Pretty much seals the deal, yeah,” said Harry.

  “What about the crash?” asked Jiwen.

  “What about it?”

  “Has it got anything to do with why you’re here? Seems like your companions are pretty interested in the crash site… do you know what the Blood is?”

  Harry gave a little laugh. “No idea. And I sure didn’t know anything about it when we came. All I knew was that we were here to get Toghrul out. But it seems like our Captain knew something about it.”

  “Does your captain keep a lot of secrets from you?”

  “It’s complicated,” said Harry. “Well, I guess, yeah, he does… but he’s never led us astray.”

  “There’s that faith of yours again.”

  “Guess so.”

  Even though he kept up the conversation, Harry could see Jiwen was getting nervous. With every new gunshot he would glance around, as if trying to assess if they were in danger. Harry himself was getting mighty keen for Kal to show up, but he outwardly maintained his calm.

  He did have faith in his companions after all. Kal and Nova would be there.

  “That Blood destroyed us,” said Jiwen.

  “You think?”

  “Gao… Ma… the Commandant… they were all dangerous men. That didn’t change,” said Jiwen, “But the moment that Blood came into this place… everyone started acting far more… intense.”

  “I guess you’ve felt it?” asked Harry.

  “Felt it?” asked Jiwen, but he hadn’t even fully got the words out when the look spread across his face. “Well, yes, of course. I presume everyone has at this point. There’s a draw to it… sometimes when I get distracted, I find myself thinking about drinking it.”

  “Yeah,” said Harry. “I dunno exactly when it started. I heard other people talking about it, and at first, I didn’t know what they meant. But now… it’s like you say. It suddenly hits you in a quiet moment – you realise you’ve spent the last few minutes – maybe longer, it’s always hard to tell – thinking about it. I found myself wondering how it would work in a cocktail.”

  “A cocktail?” asked Jiwen.

  “I’m a bartender,” said Harry.

  “Is breaking political prisoners out of Imperial prison colonies standard bartending work?”

  “Other duties as required,” said Harry, with his best attempt at a grin.

  Something caught his eye.

  Kal and Nova were at last heading their way. Though it was getting lighter, that light had not reached their corner of the settlement. As such is took Harry’s eyes a moment to pick up on it, but he felt a moment of shock ripple through him when he saw it. Both of them were drenched in blood.

  “What happened?” he exclaimed.

  “Those fucking gangsters,” growled Kal. “I dealt with them.”

  As ever a man of few words.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No worse than usual,” replied Kal.

  “Nova?”

  She looked at him with glazed eyes, utterly vacant. “Mmm,” she muttered, then looked away into the distance.

  That was unusual.

  Harry pushed away his curiosity and concern. They appeared to be uninjured. Something had clearly happened, but there would be time enough to work that out later. Everyone was present.

  “Shall we get going?” he said, glancing back Jiwen’s way.

  “We should move,” agreed Jiwen.

  Another round of gunfire punctuated his sentence, echoing out through the predawn.

  Having made up her mind not to run, Li Shulin felt a strange calm that she hadn’t experienced in months – years, perhaps. She stepped out into the morning air. In the wake of the storm and before the day’s heat, it was as refreshing and cool as ever it felt on Luanyuan. She had long since stopped noticing the aberrant gravity of the world.

  And now there were no more doubts. She no longer had to worry about the things that could come to pass – for the worst had come to pass. That was liberating, in a peculiar way. That made her feel lighter. The last real choice had been to decide upon staying when Jiwen had offered her a lifeline.

  She held little hope that Gao or Ma would see reason. They never had before, and now, based on the gunshots she was hearing, too much blood had surely been spilt for any return to normality.

  That was the one thing that still gave her pause, that gave her concern: she dreaded the fate of those not tied up in this power struggle over these half-rotted shambles in the jungle. Those who had no choice, but to be here and who had little capacity to defend themselves. She had not been lying when she told Jiwen that she was staying for them.

  As she walked, she looked up. A tiny spot of open sky had appeared. In the years she had been on Luanyuan, she’d almost forgotten what the open sky looked like. Every time it made a rare appearance, it seemed almost a shocking thing. Like many aspects of the fifty-six years she’d lived on Yuheng, the blue sky seemed like something from another life. It sometimes felt that she had truly died, and this was some cruel afterlife. Yet wasn’t the afterlife supposed to be unchanging? Here everything was consumed by decay and rot on an accelerated schedule. The buildings of the settlement, the minds of the people. Perhaps, though, it was just a case of seeing it from another perspective: the jungle was unchanging, this settlement and all the others were the futile attempts to affect change.

  Ultimately, though, all was reclaimed by the vines.

  The hall was up ahead. It seemed quaint now – all that time they had spent discussing every detail of colony life there. Playing at being some sort of responsible government. It seemed a child’s game, an amusement for them to pass their time. She had once wondered at the logic of their wardens permitting them to organise in such a manner – surely it made rebellion a greater risk. But of course, it was quite the opposite. By distracting them with the quotidian needs of the colony, they did not have time for rebellion. Nor would they escape – they would feel responsibility to their fellow convicts.

  Well, I guess it worked, reflected Shulin, giving a small laugh. Here she was, even at the bitter end, still clinging to that responsibility, that mirage of purpose in the depths of this uncaring jungle.

  She flinched as a burst of automatic weapons fire sounded nearby. She glanced around, but didn’t see the source.

  A moment later, though, she heard voices.

  A group of armed men rounded the corner of the hall. Another moment passed, and then the sound of more gunfire. The men dived for cover.

  Though she had flinched before, it was only through instinct. She felt little need to dive for cover now. Death simply didn’t scare her.

  The two groups of combatants yelled insults and taunts at each other, though both were now unseen from Shulin’s perspective.

  How strange that they should fight so fiercely over a sinking ship. Though Shulin now suspected her end would come via a bullet, it had in the past always been her assumption that the vines would claim them all one day. That they would go down fighting to the end. Yet it did not play out that way: here were Gao and Ma and their respective tribes fighting and killing each other for the chance to preside over that end.

  Humans were strange beasts.

  But something whispered at the back of her consciousness, a little voice that she had been ignoring, but which had become ever more insistent.

  They’re not fighting over the settlement, it said. They’re fighting over the Blood.

  She shook the thought from her head and resolved to do what she still could. She continued to walk forward, half expecting to feel the sting of a bullet at any moment. Yet, as long as that instant of terminal pain did not come, she would keep walking. Keep walking until she stood at what she judged to be the midpoint between the two groups.

  She came to a stop there.

  “What are you doing, fool?” came a cry from one side. She could see them now – both groups. Hidden from each other, but clear to her.

  “Get out of the way!” yelled another.

  She ignored them. “We need to stop this,” she said. Her voice was loud, but she did not yell. “The vines are the enemy, not each other.”

  “It’s too late for that!” yelled someone.

  Probably.

  “It’s isn’t,” she insisted. “Every new moment is a chance for a new choice. Whatever is in the past, the future is ours. If you want to live, put down your arms.”

  She flinched again when a shot rung out. It was not aimed at her though.

  “Shut up, and get out of the way, bitch!”

  She shook her head, remaining resolutely in place. “Don’t be blinded by the emotion of the moment.”

  She clenched her hands into fists at her side, breathing in deeply. Whereas a moment ago she had viewed these fighters with detachment, bordering on amusement, she now felt the stir of emotion herself – frustration. Surely, it was clear to them.

  They are blinded by desire, said the little voice.

  She looked from one group to the other. She could see the tension in the men’s faces, the gritty determination, the resolve for victory. She could see fear and uncertainty too, though. Surely that bull-headed resolve could be broken if she could tap into that.

  Surely.

  “Shoot me now!” she said, “I will not move otherwise. I will stand between you until you realise that whoever emerges victor here has only won the chance to be digested by the jungle – instead of the mercy of a bullet. Only united, can we survive.”

  No voice spoke.

  Not at first.

  Then one sounded out, “You’re wrong,” it said. “When we win our prize will be the Blood.”

  The sun finally peaked up over the tree tops, for the first time that day, shining its light down onto Li Shulin, standing alone and defiant in front of the hall. It shone upon her in the moment the first bullet pierced her flesh, and she slumped to the ground.

  Perhaps she was spared from being shredded by the storm that followed by that first shot. Had she remained standing a moment longer, her body would have been torn asunder. That may, in fact, have been a kindness, for though she had spoken moments earlier of the mercy of a bullet, that one shot did not kill her. Instead, she fell to the ground, pain lancing through her whole being.

  Thus, she watched as a man on one side copped a barrage to the chest and tumbled backward in a crimson mist. She saw splinters fly as bullets ricocheted off the hall. She saw little sprays of mud and filthy water erupt from the multitude of tiny impact craters that now peppered the already uneven ground, churned as it was by the chaotic traversals of the night.

  And she watched as from the opposite side of the same clearing she now lay in, another figure emerged. Not an armed man, but a woman about Shulin’s age, maybe a little older. She walked with slow, but purposeful steps, unbothered by the cacophony exploding about her, the percussive rhythm of gunfire, the bellows of masculine aggression, the screams of the dying.

  Mad to the end, Mrs Fu, thought Shulin.

  Or?

  A bright flash of light erupted by the side of Fu’s head. She was close enough now that Shulin could see the smile on her face. She bent down and from the churned mud at her feet she picked something up between her thumb and forefinger. She held it up, so that the light of the rising sun glinted off it.

  A bullet.

  In a surprisingly powerful voice she called out, “The Divine Light protects me.”

  The gunfire stuttered. Then it stopped.

  “It can protect all of you as well,” she continued.

  She walked forward, till she stood close to Shulin. Her eyes gazed down. “Such a pity, Li Shulin. Your heart was good, but you could never see the Light. Know, that it does not please me to see you this way. I had hoped you might be one day at my side. Yourself, Arthur Michael, and Zhang Jiwen… but alas: it was thus ordained.”

  She raised her head again. “You cannot hurt me. Only each other. But if you come to me, I will show you the Way of the Nine Suns. And thus armoured, we can together claim the Divine Boon of the Stars: the Eutric Blood.”

  No word was spoken by anyone else.

  “You have been lied to. For many years, and by many deceivers. All of you. But most immediately, you have been lied to by Ma Jinhai and Gao Yunqi. They have told you that you must compete amongst each other. But the Stars have provided a magnificent abundance. So, I ask you this: bring me the deceivers, embrace the Light of the Nine Suns, and there shall be no further obstacles to us claiming the Blood. Will you join me? Will you surrender your fear and let hope enter into your hearts?”

  There was silence for a time. Then murmuring. Then a man walked forward into the open space. He bowed to Fu. “I will follow you, my lady. Show me the way.”

  Others soon emerged. From both sides.

  As Shulin lay dying in the mud, she watched as the opposing fighters prostrated themselves before Fu Yuanjing. From elsewhere in the colony, other convicts, unarmed, also emerged, gathering outside the hall, surrounding her on all sides.

  The outcast madwoman had become prophetess of the damned.

  The last thing Shulin saw, before her consciousness ebbed away, was the victorious smile on Fu’s face.