We walk down the stairs towards the main body of the church. Thorn tells me he’s prioritizing the Meat House over the Duplicates. ‘It’s a matter of timing,’ he says. ‘The Dupes aren’t going anywhere.’
The rebels did just this in canon – raided the Meat House on the Friday night, the night before Rose hanged. Willow and Rose accompanied them to the raid, pretending they wanted to help. They hid in the alley with the rest of the rebels, waiting until Saskia had conned her way past the Gem guards. But instead of helping, the lovebirds used the distraction to escape the rebels – dropping down a manhole cover into the disused sewage system, slinking away like rats, trying to reach the river and the safety of No-man’s-land.
Thinking about it now, this was a really sucky thing for Rose to do; abandoning her fellow Imps so she could shack up with her dream man. I always thought she was romantic and impulsive. But now, knowing what I know, she just seems selfish.
I tell Thorn everything I remember about the Meat House – location, timings, risks. We enter the church and Thorn whispers something to Saskia. Within an hour, dozens of rebels fill the church – assembling weapons, studying plans, exchanging muted, excited words, same as in canon. And I think about those threads again, how they keep winding together in spite of everything.
I find Nate sleeping on the front pew. Someone’s laid a green blanket over him, and only the top of his sandy head pops out. I sit beside him. I can’t bear the thought of him growing up in this bloody awful place. Toiling all night at the manor, and breathing in the stinking city air in the day. But I can’t see how to fix it. I mull over Baba’s words. If you were stuck here, here in our world, how would you live your life? What kind of an Imp would you become? Maybe this is all I have left – being true to myself. And right now, that means keeping Nate, Katie and Ash alive, and sticking it to those bastard Gems.
Night falls and I wake Nate. We leave the protective walls of the church, lurching from the archway into the cold night air. Clouds obscure the sky and I can barely pick out the skeletons of the surrounding buildings. The rebels start loading weapons on to a collection of beat-up vehicles – Humvees, hovercycles, trucks – all originally Gem vehicles, stolen or salvaged.
Thorn guides us to a faded-yellow pickup truck; the jagged, dark shapes of weaponry fill the cargo area. It’s the same truck Willow and Rose travelled to the raid in, and it feels like the canon is mocking me again.
Nate and I wriggle into the back of the truck, the dirty floor scraping our palms, and pick our way over the collection of boxes and rifles. We perch on a small wooden plinth, our backs pressed against the hard metal of the cab, just like Rose and Willow.
‘Mum would have a fit,’ Nate says. He’s right. She’s always been such a stickler for road safety – seat belts on, no loose shopping in case some rogue tin of beans flew at our heads in the event of an accident. Death by beans, Dad called it, and Mum playfully kicked him under the table. I push the image from my mind; seeing their happy faces just makes my chest ache.
I watch Matthew lead Ash into a Humvee. Ash’s movements look fluid, and I feel huge relief he hasn’t sustained any major injuries. He watches me from the back of the vehicle, his face distorted by the smeared pane – a mosaic of washed-out colours beneath a black smudge of hair. The hovercycles whir into action, and he vanishes behind a layer of hot, sandy air.
Saskia jumps in beside Thorn and the truck begins to vibrate. It may look like a regular truck, but it doesn’t run on petrol, so emits no noise.
‘Hydrogen,’ Nate says. ‘I want this truck.’
‘I’d settle for a seat belt,’ I reply.
We accelerate. The G-force hurls us forwards and I nearly headbutt a crate of ammo. But the speed soon evens out and we steady ourselves against the cab, our arms linked for stability and comfort. The shelters lining the streets blur together, grey shot through with polythene, rainbow-like beneath the headlights. I can just make out the other vehicles following us, their headlights dipped and muted like a collection of glow-worms. The cab offers some form of slipstream, but the wind still makes my eyes water and my ears ring, and I can’t stop thinking about the danger ahead. I try to concentrate on breathing – in, out, in, out.
Nate turns to me. ‘Is this a good idea? The raid I mean.’
I can’t bring myself to look at his face, which I know will be all innocent and pixie-like. ‘It’s our only option.’
‘Rose and Willow only went so they could escape from the rebels. They used it as a distraction, they didn’t even enter the Meat House.’
I watch the buildings flash by, the windows and bricks merging into one long brushstroke. ‘I had to tell Thorn about it, there wasn’t a choice.’ The wind steals all the confidence from my words.
‘Why?’
‘Look, it’s tricky to explain, just let me be big sister for once.’
He exhales quickly, snatching his arm from mine. ‘Stop treating me like a kid.’
‘You are a kid.’
‘I’m nearly fifteen.’
I look at him. The wind has flattened all the spikes from his hair, and in the starlight the top of his head looks like a bullion bar. The weight of responsibility feels like it’s going to crush me. The truck swerves at a corner and I fall against the metal side panel. ‘I had to tell Thorn something or he would have killed Ash.’
‘Oh, so this is still a love story, I see.’
‘Thorn had a knife. I was thinking really fast.’
‘So you chose one Gem with one knife over many Gems with many guns.’
‘Well I don’t hear the Imp concubines complaining.’ It comes out a little snappy, which I immediately regret.
‘Soon as the rebels enter the Meat House, we should do exactly what we’re meant to – find a manhole cover and drop into the sewers so we don’t get shot.’
‘What about Katie?’
‘I don’t know.’ Guilt hangs in his words.
‘If we run, they’ll kill her. And – and—’
‘And what?’
‘And what about the Imps? The way those bastard Gems treat us.’
‘So now you’re a rebel?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ I chew my lip. ‘But if we can’t complete the story, if we can’t go home, we need to think about what sort of a life we want to live here.’ Another line of that rhyme gets stuck in my head – take up your guns, your stones and sticks. Maybe I can bring hope to the Imps even if I don’t hang at the Gallows Dance. Maybe I can help incite a revolution a different way.
The panic in Nate’s voice drags me back to reality. ‘Don’t say that, Violet. Of course we’ll go home.’
How? I want to scream at him. Exactly how are we going to go home now? Willow loves Alice. He doesn’t love me. How am I supposed to fix that in one day? But I think he’s about to cry. So instead I don’t say anything. I just gaze at the stars, which remain remarkably still in spite of the wind in our hair and the relentless movement of the buildings.
‘I miss Mum and Dad,’ he finally says.
‘Yeah. Me too.’
‘And food.’
‘And sleep.’
He watches me for a moment. ‘Violet?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Do you ever have . . . any really weird dreams?’
I shift my weight against the cab. ‘All the time.’
‘No, I mean, insanely weird dreams, where you hear . . . voices. You know, like they’re real.’
‘Mum and Dad?’
He looks excited. ‘Yeah, saying things like, Wake up, Jonathan, you can do it.’
I nod. ‘And sometimes I can smell the inside of a hospital.’
Nate bites the skin around his fingers, nudging his lip as the truck hits a bump. ‘Do you think this is the dream?’
I wish he hadn’t said this. The thought has plagued me since we arrived in this world, but it messes with my head, so I’ve dampened it down, shoved it to one side, just trying to maintain my sanity. I study the stars for a minute. Is earth – our earth – really up there somewhere? Eventually, I speak. ‘Like a coma-induced dream, or something?’
‘Maybe.’
I consider telling him about the pips of the hospital machine and about the fairy tales. About my sash and Rose’s belt of blood. About his Frankenstein insult and how it may have created the Dupes. But my head hurts from thinking, from the relentless wind pushing through my pores and under my skin, and I can feel the idea gradually undoing me at the seams. No, this can’t be a dream, it’s too bloody scary.
The braking of the truck pulls me from my thoughts. It slows and turns down an alley, the glow-worm-headlights expanding into white, sparkling plates. We grind to a halt, hemmed in by two crumbling brick walls. A line, heavy with washing, blocks out the stars.
Nate sighs. ‘I love this truck.’
‘I’ll get you one for your birthday.’
‘Nah. DeLorean all the way.’ He pats the side of the cargo area. ‘No offence.’
I feel the air – hot against my cheeks – as the hover-cycles approach, disturbing the water in a nearby drain, chucking up mud particles and slime. The rebels dismount, checking their weapons and talking in hushed tones. I look for Ash, but I see no signs of the Humvee.
Thorn slams the truck door and hauls me from my perch, the sharp edge of the truck’s side scraping against my shin. ‘You can play canary,’ he says.
‘What?’ I try to straighten myself, but I feel like I’ve stepped off a fairground ride.
‘You know, in the old days, before the Gems, when people were just people, they’d send canaries into the mines first to see if the poisonous gases would kill them.’
I must still look blank, because he rolls his eyes and says, ‘You’re going in first, Violet. This was your idea, you pay the price if you’re wrong. You pretend you’re one of the girls, then you slip this into the Gems’ drinks.’ He pushes a vial of orange liquid into my hand. ‘You’ve got ten minutes, then we bust through the doors and the windows. Just keep yourself out of trouble until then.’
I silently curse. In canon, Saskia went in first – conned her way past the guards, drugged the Gems and summoned the troops, all in less than ten minutes. I’ll never manage that.
Thorn fluffs Nate’s hair. ‘You do a runner, Violet, you turn us in, and I’ve got my own little canary right here.’
Saskia dashes towards us. ‘Let me go first, she’ll only balls it up like everything else.’
Thorn shakes his head and grabs a shotgun from the back of the truck. ‘I want to see what our Little Flower here’s made of.’
‘She’s only seventeen.’ She grabs Thorn’s arm, her eyes wide. ‘Please.’
Her concern surprises me. I feel a sudden rush of tears. It’s like I’m eight again, falling off my bike and walking two miles home with a busted-up knee, only to start crying when I see Mum.
But Thorn seems unmoved. ‘The Gems will think her a tastier piece of meat.’
Saskia doesn’t argue, but her disapproval stiffens the muscles around her jaw. She begins fussing around me, pinching my cheeks and detangling my hair with her fingers. ‘You sending Ash in too?’ Her voice sounds clipped. ‘Cos he’s only eighteen, you know. They’re both just kids.’
‘He can come along with the rest of us,’ Thorn says. ‘But don’t take your eyes off him, I’m not having the lovebirds running off together in the commotion.’
I catch Nate’s eye. Current-Thorn is smarter than canon-Thorn. But then I remember the main difference: he trusted Rose, he doesn’t trust me.
Saskia lowers the zip on my overalls and frowns at my lack of cleavage. ‘Pretend you belong, that’s the secret,’ she whispers to me.
I try not to laugh – that’s what I’ve been trying to do since I arrived in this world.
‘And if you get into trouble,’ she says, ‘knock the main light off, OK? We’ll come for you.’
Ash jumps out of the Humvee. ‘What’s going on?’ He dashes towards me.
‘I’m the canary,’ I reply.
‘The canary?’
‘You know, they’re going to send me in first to see how safe it is.’
‘No way. I’ll go,’ Ash says.
‘Well, well, quite the little hero, aren’t we?’ Thorn waves a hand and several rebels surround Ash, preventing him from reaching me. Thorn turns to me and shrugs, a tight smile gripping his mouth. ‘Turn left at the end of the alley. Thirteen rows, remember?’
I hold Ash’s gaze. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Nate squeezes my hand, his eyes moist. ‘Balls of steel,’ he whispers.
‘Like Katniss, like Tris, like Rose,’ I whisper back.
And before his tears start to fall, before Ash receives another beating, I slip the vial of sleeping draught up my sleeve and begin to walk down the alley into the unknown.