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more than that, she almost smiled. ‘I am, thank you,
Nik. You?’
    â€˜Yes, thanks.’
    Lanya appeared beside us. ‘Sub-commander? Something happened down by the bridge
that I think you should know about.’ She nudged me. ‘Tell her.’
    Levkova’s eyebrows lifted and she gave me a steely stare. ‘It’ll have to wait,’ she
said. ‘You’re wanted.’
    Jeitan came over. ‘The commander wants comms up. We need to talk to people upriver.’
    Easier said than done, but we scavenged functional bits and pieces from different
places and set up in one of the still-standing sleeping sheds. I spent an hour jury-rigging
the system into something operational: it would work as long as I hovered over it
and doctored it the whole time. I was trying to contact Curswall, the next township
upriver, when the screen flickered.
    â€˜Incoming!’ I called.
    â€˜Ah!’ said a voice from the screen. ‘There you are.’
    â€˜Commander?’ I said. ‘We’ve got audio.’
    The feed stuttered. ‘Commander Vega? Are you there?’
    Then we had visual, but it wasn’t coming from upriver at all. It was coming from
across the river. A woman peered out of the screen. She had grey-streaked dark hair
pulled tightly back, a sharp pale face, bird-dark eyes and a tiny, tight mouth. Frieda
Kelleran, the woman who’d taken me, aged four, to the Tornmoor Academy after my mother
had been killed by Cityside security agents and my father thrown in the Marsh. She’d
been promoted for her efforts, and now she was a high-up for that same outfit—Director
of Security in fact.
    The reception was blurred and crackling, and Frieda’s voice, speaking Anglo, was
blaring one minute and indecipherable the next. But it wouldn’t have mattered if
she’d been invisible and speaking ancient Croat—we’d received her message loud and
clear about seven hours earlier. I glanced around. Not a muscle moved on any face.
They watched, impassive. Listened. Someone nudged me to translate so I murmured along
with her to a small group gathered close.
    â€˜I don’t have visual on you,’ she said. ‘Perhaps your equipment is damaged. I’ll
assume you can hear me.’ She waved a hand towards us. ‘What do you think of our handiwork?
We haven’t touched the township but those of you on the hill may have casualties.’
    The guy standing next to me opened his mouth as though he was about to yell at her,
but Vega held up a hand for quiet and he subsided.
    Frieda said, ‘What we’ve done tonight is a small thing—a shrug. See how you shake
when we shrug?’ She leaned forward, her head filled the screen. She was so pale that
she kept disappearing into the static, except for her eyes, black beads in the white.
‘I have this to say. Listen carefully. We do not negotiate with extremists. We reject
your so-called ceasefire. As for what happens next…Now that I have your attention,
I could ask you where your One City friends are hiding, but I know what your answer
will be. We have reliable intelligence on that in any case, and we’ll be acting on
it shortly. So we’ll skip that step, shall we, and move right along.’ She smiled
thinly. ‘To what, you ask. Patience, patience. You’ll see. I have plans for Moldam.
But for now, it’s been a long night so if you’ll excuse me…’ She nodded to someone
we couldn’t see then the screen went blank and the static died away.
    A wave of swearing and muttering went through the room. Then someone called out,
‘Listen!’ Everyone stopped, and we heard it, the hum—the high-pitched hum that makes
your teeth ache and your skin crawl. The hum that will kill you when it lands.
    Vega yelled, ‘Take cover!’ and we dived under the bunkbeds. The hum became a whine,
then a scream, then an almighty roar shook the building and the