Into the No-Zone. Eugene Lambert

The girl looks up, startled, to see him making the Sign of One. Marat comes over. One look and he makes it too – the sign against evil.

      The girl’s blood turns to ice. ‘What’s wrong?’

      Hicks turns his back, lurches off to a corner of the pen and picks up some filthy old sacking. More cursing as he throws it at her.

      ‘What’s this for?’ she says. Instantly realises this was a mistake.

      ‘Same as yesterday,’ Marat sneers. ‘You forget already?’

      ‘We’re cursed,’ Hicks growls, looking disgusted. ‘Two blasted sets in two days. We’ll be in the upper pens when you’re done at the river. And don’t lose the sack this time, you hear? They don’t grow on trees.’

      Finally, the girl understands. This ewe being restless again – it has a second lamb on the way. A twin lamb!

      The sack. The river. She can’t help shuddering.

      One is good, two is evil. The words pound through her brain as Hicks shambles off swearing, pulling at what’s left of his hair. Marat looks at the girl, his forehead knotted, like he’s chewing on a bone inside his head. This makes the girl sweat. She does her dumber-than-dumb face and sketches the Sign of One. Not because she wants to: because she has to.

      What was her fool of a sister thinking? Why didn’t she warn her?

      The ewe lies down, strains and bleats. The girl glimpses a second set of tiny hoofs start squeezing out into the world. And then the gate bangs shut against its stone gatepost, making the girl jump. She looks up and Hicks and Marat are gone. It’s just her and the sheep now. She drops to her knees in the straw, shaking. The old ewe takes a break from straining to glare at her out of its dark-slot eye. She reaches out and runs her hand over its firstborn. The tiny wet thing butts her fingers with its snout, mistaking her for its mother. It cries out, desperate for milk.

      How can this poor little thing be evil? the girl wonders.

      Like everyone else out here she’s half starved. Her pale face is pinched, her stomach swollen. She can’t help thinking that this is two lambs for the price of one: two small bundles of wool and milk and mutton and hope – a blessing not a curse. She says this last phrase over and over again. It’s word for word what her mother whispers to her and her twin sister every night at their going-to-bed time.

      It’s only the rest of the world that disagrees . . .

      The old ewe tires and needs help. The girl pulls the second lamb out by its hooves, sorts its breathing like before and sees to the birth cord. Without thinking, she helps give the poor little doomed thing life. As the ewe starts licking and nudging it, she fights not to think about how she’ll soon be sticking them both in the sack. Or how it will feel as the sack thrashes in the cold water. Most of all, she tries not to think about what will happen to her and her twin sister if they’re ever found out. It won’t just be a bag over their heads and a trip to the river. They won’t get off so lightly.

      The girl almost never cries. She has a quick cry now.

      Stones crunch and rattle, dislodged by a boot. She looks around and Marat is back. He leans on the gate, chomping on a piece of bindgrass. Says nothing. Just stares at her. Real hard.

      Does he see her tears in the gloom? She can’t be sure.

      Quickly, hating to do it, the girl stuffs the lambs into the sack. She shoves her way out and past Marat, shutting her ears to the ewe’s frantic bleating. She runs down to the river, finds a quiet spot. Only she can’t drown them, like her sister did. Instead, she takes a desperate chance. She hides them inside a dead tree, covering them with grass and leaves to keep them warm. She whispers to them that she’ll come back when it’s dark and sneak them home. Her mother will know what to do.

      ‘You’re a blessing not a curse,’ she tells them.

      But as she turns around, the girl sees Marat has followed her . . .

PART ONE

1

       SO MUCH FOR BEING A HERO

      I’m getting the hang of this being beaten to a pulp thing. They haul me to my feet. I shuffle forward in the fighting crouch I’ve been taught. And then our combat instructor, Stauffer, knocks all kinds of lumps out of me until I fall down again.

      He’s hammering me, laughing while he does it.

      Plenty of other instructors and trainees are loving it too, watching the ‘hero’ of the Facility raid have his head kicked in.

      Why not? If I were them, I’d hate me too.

      It’s Ballard’s fault. He won’t let me or my brother Colm fight for real, says we’re too valuable to the Gemini cause to be risked. So while these guys we train with go off on hit-and-run raids, we sit tight here in our hidden base in the Deeps. That’d be enough to get us hated, but there are his speeches too. Rebel units from all over Wrath are flown out here to be rested, or for training. None of them escape Ballard’s we’re-all-in-this-together-and-fighting-for-the-future-of-idents speech. I get shoved in front of them, called a hero and made to tell my edited story – from finding out I was myself an ident and a nublood, through to how I ‘volunteered’ to let myself be captured, knowing I’d be taken to the secret Slayer base known as the Facility; breaking out with my brother’s help and activating the beacon buried in my arm so our rebel forces could destroy the base and rescue the hundreds of nublood kids enslaved there.

      Ballard says my story inspires them. Says it’s important.

      Yeah, right. He should ask Stauffer if I inspire him. This was a regular empty-hand skills session until he’d picked on Colm even worse than usual, to wind me up. I can keep my temper when I’m taking the hits, but I lost it and called him out.

      ‘Stay down, Kyle. Don’t be stupid,’ Colm hisses.

      ‘I can take him,’ I mumble.

      I spit a gobful of red on to the dirt and groan. Something scrapes painfully inside me, like one of my ribs is bust. Above me, the bigmoon is already above the overhanging cliff, its crescent and rings bright in the darkening sky. Sky lizards circle in the last of the day’s updraughts, their shrill whistling calls drifting down.

      Even they sound like they’re jeering.

      ‘Hey, Kyle, we need to talk,’ a familiar voice shouts.

      I groan again as I see Sky elbowing her way through the watchers, breathing fast like she’s run here. Only before I can say anything, I’m thrown back at Stauffer. Maybe I fight harder now she’s here. Anyway, I nail him once – hard enough to pull a grunt out of him – before he knocks me back down again.

      Sky squats beside me. ‘You’re the punchbag today?’

      I shrug, so big-gob Colm answers for me, nodding towards the grinning Stauffer. ‘Kyle challenged him.’

      She scowls. ‘Challenged your instructor? Smart move.’

      Scowls are all I get from Sky these days. Not that we even see each other that often, now she’s flying combat ops.

      ‘Yeah, like you’d take his shit,’ I growl.

      ‘Make yourself useful,’ Colm says, chucking her a wet cloth.

      Sky dabs carelessly at my face. ‘I’ve got news about my sister,’ she says, all excited. ‘I need to show you something.’

      Around me, I hear the trainees muttering. Laughter too.

      I grab the rag off her. ‘I’m busy.’

      ‘You swore you’d help me find Tarn. Remember?’